Rescue individuals from
North Korea before criticizing
Miyazaki Manabu
On Jan. 29, a Japanese woman
returned home from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
(North Korea) after 44 years in the Korean Peninsula. She managed
to escape North Korea last November and came home via China.
However, two South Korean nationals, who are identified as defectors
from North Korea, were arrested by the Chinese authorities on
suspicion of abduction. Sources say that the defectors have
demanded tens of millions of yens to the Japanese government
as a reward, or ransom.
Through this incident, we have learned that the Japanese government
had paid those "defection brokers" secretly in the past in order
to secure repatritaion of Japanese nationals fleeing North Korea.
According to sources, the confirmed number of people who managed
to return under such circumstances have accumulated to more
than 20.
Actually, I had been presented with an offer from members
who claims themselves to be the member of an NGO from abroad
that they wanted money in return for providing a homecoming
of a Japanese woman who had fled from North Korea and at the
time was under their organization's protection. If my recollection
is correct, it was back in 2001. The proposed amount of money
was 12 million yen per person, and if the person was a "celebrity,"
the price would be 60 million yen per person.
Celebrity obviously meant a handful of men and women confirmed
to have been abducted to North Korea and whose family members
have established an organization, petitioning their return to
Japan. At the time, I thought those people referred "celebrity"
as Megumi Yokota, a woman who had been abducted in 1977 on her
way home from junior high school in Niigata. There were many
rumors concerning Yokota in 2001. When Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi made a historic visit to North Korea last year, Yokota
was reported as having died in 1993 by the North Korean government.
However, when the NGO members contacted me, it had been believed
that Yokota was still alive. Of course there was a possibility
that those people had used Yokota's name to beef up their transaction.
However, the deal was never struck.
They did not present me the details of the negotiation, and
their offer itself was somewhat vague. They failed to propose
where to hand the person over, whether it would be Beijing or
Shenyang. How I should pay, whether it should be in exchange
with the person, was never answered. I kept making inquiries
to them, and finally I lost contact.
The episode clearly shows that the brokers have existed back
then, and it is obvious that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
have been paying them to claim the Japanese nationals back.
There are criticizms that people are making business out of
people fleeing North Korea, but I do not share the view. On
the contrary, I definitely approve such business to flourish.
We have learned that the foreign ministry have managed to pay
the necessary expenses using its confidential diplomatic funds.
I believe this has been the best effort by the ministry to spend
the confidential funds, considering that a ministry official
had been convicted for the misuse of the funds a few years ago.
The official squandered the funds for his private use, and it
included purchasing of racehorses.
I am really sorry that there had been no foreign ministry
official who would match Masaru Sato dealing the North Korean
issues. Sato had been indicted with breach of trust concerning
the ministry's Russian policies, along with a Liberal Democratic
Party lawmaker Muneo Suzuki. Sato's nickname had been "Rasputin
of the foreign ministry," because he had possessed an enormous
power with Suzuki's authority. Anyway, if Sato, or someone who
had the capability close to Sato, was dealing the repatriation
program from North Korea in the ministry, many more Japanese
nationals who are being trapped inside North Korea may have
managed to return to their home country.
I believe the government have
spent millions of yens in order to covertly repatriate people
from North Korea. I think the government should go on spending
more money to save them rather than people criticizing the policy.
I have few reasons why I believe this way.
First reason is that people have established enterprises to
make people escape North Korea. Upon the return of the 64 year-old
woman mentioned at the beginning of the story, the organizers
were former defectors who now possess South Korean nationality.
From their point of view, they are risking their lives making
Japanese nationals escape from North Korea, which have become
more and more difficult. If the task--and a big one indeed--
was successful, I believe payment is necessary to cover the
cost of the operation.
Whether paying to those organizations is correct from humanitarian
point of view, or from justice, should be a totally different
argument in saving the stranded Japanese people in North Korea.
The devastating condition in North Korea should not allow such
silly argument. As we know, the Japanese nationals and their
families in North Korea are suffering tragic circumstances today.
Their tragedy began when "Repatriation Program" began in the
late 1950s, when Kim Il-Sung's North Korean government announced
that they are welcoming Koreans and their families who were
living in Japan at the time. There were many Koreans living
in Japan as a result of Imperial Japan's expansionism, which
made the Korean peninsula as its colony between 1910 and 1945.
The Koreans faced discriminations, and especially after the
Korean War, many had hoped to return to their homeland. With
the support of Japanese and North Korean Red Cross, nearly 100,000
Koreans and their families, some of them Japanese who had married
to Koreans, sailed to North Korea between 1958 and 1984 from
the port of Niigata, on the coast of Sea of Japan.
I have had opportunities to read letters written by Japanese
nationals who "repatriated" to North Korea to their relatives.
I was shocked to learn that they often hinted between the lines
that if the relatives did not send cash to North Korea, their
lives are seriously threatened. The relatives are actually sending
every yen possible to their family members in North Korea, because
they know the devastating consequences that await their loved
ones if they failed to send money. I know a very old man who
is sending 50,000 yen to 70,000 yen on monthly basis. As long
as the North Korean authorities confirm the cash flow, his family's
fate is stable, but once the cash stops, the family could immediately
be sent to one of the concentration camps.
The magnitude of their suffering, is the reality, and those
people desperately wish to escape North Korea, and on the other
side exist a certain number of people who offer them helping
hands. We should give supporting hands to the people supporting
the defectors.
The second reason is that I believe
supporting the brokers would result in more people fleeing North
Korea, and that could speed up the collapse of Kim Jong-Il's
regime. Remember when the Soviet Union had gone under. Socialist
nations collapse, not because people changed their ideological
belief to "socialism sucks," but the driving force was people
beginning to think they want to eat better, or live better life,
a very fundamental human desire. From such a point of view,
if there is business of helping people out of North Korea spawning,
it is a sign that the current North Korea's government has come
to its final stage. Of the 100,000 people who sailed to North
Korea with the repatriation program, it is estimated that 8,000
of them were Japanese citizens. We should feel responsible for
these 8,000 souls in hardship.
January's incident of repatriating the woman to Japan made
a numerous twists and turns between the governments of Japan
and China, both of them feared to lose face, and those who aided
the woman to leave North Korea had been taken custody by the
Chinese authorities. Considering the diplomatic relationship
between China and North Korea, the two may face death penalty
after being deported back to North Korea. In addition, the operation,
or the hunt for people escaping from North Korea by the Chinese
authorities could be strengthened at the Chinese-North Korean
border. I believe the Japanese government must stop the Chinese
taking such an act, at all diplomatic cost.
I also believe that actually saving one person fleeing North
Korea has more significance than lawmakers and families of the
abductees making 100 appearances on media and ask for Japanese
people's support on the issue. The alleged brokers actually
saved a Japanese woman's life, and we must take this seriously
into account.
There is a theory that if the
Japanese government shows its willingness to fund it, Chinese
government may take a new shift and begin supporting escapes
from North Korea. Why? Because Chinese mafias have strong ties
with the ruling Chinese Communist authorities. So officially,
the government may tighten the escape attempts. However, as
long as there is supply and demand, plus there is certain amount
of money involved, there would be loopholes. On the other hand,
there is a different possibility, that the North Korean government
itself may start exporting people out of the country, by running
a mediating enterprise itself, if they learn the fact that the
Japanese government would pay more with confidential diplomatic
funds rather than the official financial support.
The brokers, considering the fact that they themselves are
defectors from North Korea, must have been aware of the fact
that they could face shooting squad if they were deported back
to their former home country. But they took the risk because
they sought some prospects by their operation. The operation
is obviously dangerous, but I think people's desperate desire
for escape and survival would eventually change the course of
history.
We must
seriously think what we could do to help North Korea, an outrageous
nation, collapse as soon as possible.
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