North Korean plea is personal for senator

OTTAWA – A Senate committee is calling on the government to do more to help North Korean defectors who are caught in an international legal limbo. The Senate human rights committee says the few defectors who actually mange to escape their closed, communist country are automatically granted South Korean citizenship if they make it to freedom. But that can prevent them from applying to third countries as refugees. The senators say that makes Canada different from the United States, which has legislation that allows North Koreans to be treated as refugees. Sen. Yonah Martin, Canada’s first Korean-born senator, says she and her fellow committee members realize a similar law would take much work. The Canadian Press