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43 North Korean refugees entered the Canadian Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday, demanding passage to South Korea. This was the largest number of North Korean defectors to enter a foreign legation ever. On Monday, nine defectors entered the American School in Shanghai, after which they were turned over to Chinese police.
Now, regardless of oppression, or hard-line policy, or intentional neglect, one cannot stop North Koreans from defecting and coming to South Korea. The last 10 years of defector history testify to this. Even the U.S. Congress has initiated legislation of a law to aid defectors and allow them asylum in the United States. The defector problem has become an international issue, regardless of whether our government averts the issue or not. Whether it’s out of concern for human rights or love for our brothers in the North, the South Korean government has no choice but to open the first sluice gate to a solution for this issue.
We must now look at the essence of the defector issue in its entirety. We have no choice but to change our understanding of this issue and countermeasures for it. If we continue on to the climax thinking as we do now, we are bound to run into a situation with which it would be difficult to cope.
How many defectors could our society accept? How much further could we expand our defector-related budget, which comes out to an annual W50 billion a year? What kind of shocks would our society undergo if the number of defectors coming to Korea increased from its current 1,000 annually to thousands or tens of thousands? If Korea were to adopt policies of aggressively accepting North Korean defectors in China, what kind of changes would they have on defection trends out of North Korea? What kind of short-term and long-term influence would that have on the North Korean system, intra-Korean relations and unification on the Korean Peninsula? We must hasten concrete and substantive research and consideration into these essential questions. Upon that research and consideration, we must rebuild our principles and policies concerning defectors.
Our government, however, has yet to properly put together even one white paper on defectors. Research and investigations into the current situation of defectors in China or the realities of defectors settled in South Korea are simply for show. The defector issue is a multidimensional, international crux. If the South Korean government is consistent in showing intentional disinterest while reading the North Korean regime's mind, or tries to get through this situation with a passive attitude, it will forfeit the right to speak on issues concerning the Korean race and unification.
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