'It's like we're in a fishing net': North Korean defectors wary of tightened surveillance in China

Record ID: 1843718

  • Title: 'It's like we're in a fishing net': North Korean defectors wary of tightened surveillance in China
  • Date: 25th September 2024
  • Summary: TITLE OF BOOK WRITTEN BY CHOI READING (Korean): “ESCAPE FROM NORTH KOREA” (SOUNDBITE) (Korean) NORTH KOREAN DEFECTOR, CHOI MIN-KYONG, SAYING: “It (surveillance) has become more advanced with (the collection of) fingerprints, which didn’t exist before. About 12 years ago, we could easily make fake IDs and used them just fine.“ DANDONG, LIAONING PROVINCE, CHINA (FILE - 2021)
  • Embargoed: 9th October 2024 03:00
  • Keywords: China China-North Korea Friendship Bridge Cuba Forbidden City Jilin province North Korea North Korean Embassy North Korean escapees Ri Il Gyu SHIN ETHAN HEE-SEOK TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE WORKING GROUP border border control defectors escape facial recognition surveillance technology survelliance watchtower
  • Location: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA / UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION, VIETNAM / UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION, LAOS / DANDONG, BEIJING, JILIN PROVINCE, CHINA
  • City: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA / UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION, VIETNAM / UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION, LAOS / DANDONG, BEIJING, JILIN PROVINCE, CHINA
  • Country: South Korea
  • Topics: Asia / Pacific,Asylum/Immigration/Refugees,Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA004136904092024RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A North Korean defector recalled fears she experienced while living in China when the country tightened surveillance in border areas, making it harder for defectors to evade capture.
    Shin Ju-ye, 50, who fled North Korea in the 1990s and settled in China's Heilongjiang province, managed to defect to South Korea last year.
    Video footage filmed by her mobile phone, which Reuters cannot independently verify, showed her escape journey, including a bus ride in Vietnam and passing through dark jungle in Laos. She declined to disclose detailed information on the precise route she took, for fear of jeopardizing others’ escape.
    Shin said that during the COVID-19 pandemic, village officials in China began ordering North Koreans living in the area to register their biometric information with the police.
    Many of her North Korean acquaintances submitted to such requests at police stations, she said.
    "Those who had registered their fingerprints told me, 'Sister, it was great that we could get the vaccines and getting tested for COVID-19, but there’s one big disadvantage. Now it’s like we’re in a fishing net. If North Korea tells China to catch and send us, we will be all sent back together," said Shin.
    Ultimately, Shin did not register her details. Instead, she hatched a plan to leave China.
    Reuters could not independently verify Shin's account, and she declined to share her acquaintances' contact information.
    Wei Songxian, head of the Heilongjiang government's media office and vice-head of the provincial Communist Party publicity department, did not respond to questions about Shin's account.
    China's National Immigration Administration, which is responsible for border police, and the Ministry of Public Security, which oversees the immigration agency, did not respond to queries about efforts to identify and deport North Koreans.
    Beijing's Foreign Ministry said China protected "the rights and interests of foreigners in China, while lawfully maintaining the order of border entries and exits". It said the "relevant report is completely not factual", in an apparent reference to Reuters reporting. The ministry didn't respond to additional questions about Reuters findings and which elements it considered incorrect.
    North Korea's embassy in Beijing and its U.N. missions in Geneva and New York didn't respond to questions about China's handling of defectors.
    Choi Min-kyong, another defector who made it to South Korea in 2012, recalls being monitored by Chinese officials. But surveillance back then was less advanced, and a fake ID granted a modicum of freedom.
    Surveillance “has become more advanced with (the collection of) fingerprints, which didn’t exist before. About 12 years ago, we could easily make fake IDs and used them just fine,” said Choi, who now runs a rights group in South Korea.
    Shin said China’s border has become “non-crossable” even for a rabbit with the electronic fence and surveillance cameras set up every 10 meters.
    Beijing denies that there are any North Korean defectors, instead treating them as illegal economic migrants. There is no publicly available data on deportations of North Koreans, but rights groups say the tighter surveillance has increased the risk of capture.
    About seven of every 10 defectors have been arrested by Chinese police over the past two years while trying to make their way to South Korea, up from about 20% previously, according to the Seoul-based Transitional Justice Working Group, which monitors deportations.
    China returned at least 60 North Koreans in April this year, the group said.
    “The digital surveillance system in China is developing and this includes not only the facial recognition system but also the recognition of the walking patterns or… the cell phones that they would use. So, all this information feeds into the surveillance system that the Chinese authorities operate. And all this advancement in digital technology, surveillance, has made it more difficult for the North Korean refugees to move within the country or to escape from China and to South Korea or elsewhere," said the group's legal analyst Ethan Hee-Seok Shin.
    Lee Dong Gyu, a China expert at Asan Institution for Policy Studies in Seoul, said the crackdown helped Beijing maintain stability along its northeast border, and also gave it potential leverage over its neighbour as China could ultimately determine the fate of undocumented North Koreans in the country. China “can demand something from North Korea that is beneficial to China,” he said.
    The number of defectors reaching South Korea has declined overall since 2017, which Seoul's Unification Ministry said was due to tighter surveillance on the China-North Korea border, though there has been an increase since the pandemic ended.
    In a statement, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Seoul is making 'all-out efforts' to prevent China from forcibly repatriating North Korean defectors.
    (Production: Heejung Jung, Dogyun Kim, Daewoung Kim, Sebin Choi, Jihyun Jeon, Minwoo Park)
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