North Koreans in China vanish as border reopens

HELONG: After fleeing famine in North Korea, Kim Cheol Ok laid low in China for decades - until a doomed run for freedom got her sent back to her repressive homeland, her family says.

She is among hundreds of North Koreans repatriated by China in recent months, according to rights groups, which say they face imprisonment, torture and even execution back home.

Kim Cheol Ok’s family took the rare and risky decision of publicising her case after she vanished last year.

In a frantic farewell call, she “said that she would be sent back to... North Korea in two hours, and hung up,” her sister Kim Kyu-li said.

Neither she nor any other relative has been able to contact her since.

Thousands of North Koreans are thought to live illegally in China’s northeastern borderlands.

Beijing sporadically rounds them up, but deportations ceased while the frontier was closed during the pandemic.

Pyongyang views unsanctioned border crossings as a serious crime and is believed to hand brutal punishments to transgressors.

“In North Korea, prison is a dangerous place,” said Kim Kyu-li, who lives in London.

Neither China nor North Korea have officially acknowledged Kim Cheol Ok’s case.

But AFP corroborated her story via interviews with Kim Kyu-li, a lawyer campaigning for the deportees, and a source in China with knowledge of the case who spoke anonymously for fear of official reprisals.

Following the reopening of the Chinesenorth Korean border, an AFP team travelled to the area.

Chinese border police prevented the journalists from visiting four official crossing points, saying they needed special permits.

They included the town of Nanping, opposite the North Korean city of Musan, where Kim Cheol Ok is believed to have been repatriated.

But the reporters viewed nearby points of the frontier, where North Korean guards stood sentry in watchtowers and behind rows of sharpened sticks.

They saw North Koreans farming or lugging timber. One town appeared eerily empty, save for mournful music echoing off decrepit housing blocks.

Public notices on the Chinese side warned against communicating with North Koreans and vowed “severe punishments” for harbouring illegal migrants or smuggling.

Across the border, a giant North Korean propaganda sign looming over one settlement blared: “My country is the best!”