Needless to say, the arrest will have an impact on the defector community

The arrest of a North Korean woman for posing as a defector to the South in order to spy for Pyongyang has made defectors and officials with North Korean refugee organizations uneasy.

Many North Korean refugees are concerned that their families in the North may suffer because their activities in the South were allegedly reported to the North. Refugees who are engaged in anti-Kim Jong-il activities are also worried about their own safety. Cha Sung-joo, secretary general of the Committee for Democratization of North Korea, said, “North Korea’s Ministry of Public Security and the State Security Department control North Korean society by instigating a sense of fear. It turns one of every three North Korean residents into a spy and makes people afraid to speak even with their friends. The North Korean Public Security Ministry seems to be trying to cause fear in the North Korean refugee community in the South.”

Admitting North Korean defectors is a long and tedious process. This is why (Via ROK Drop)

Prosecutors indicted a 34-year-old North Korean female defector Wednesday on charges of spying for the communist nation.

The woman, identified as Won Jeong-hwa, allegedly relayed military secrets she obtained from Army officers with whom she was having sexual relations over the past five years to the North.

She is the first female spy to be arrested since Lee Sun-sil, a key figure in North Korea’s Communist Party, was apprehended on espionage charges in 1992, and the first defector to violate the National Security Law.

Prosecutor Kim Kyeong-su said this was also the first case of spying uncovered since the two Koreas held a historic summit in 2000.

If she is convicted, the case would confirm concerns over infiltration by agents posing as refugees.

Activists in Seoul protest Hu Jintao’s arrival

North Korean defectors in Seoul staged a rally Monday to protest China’s repatriation of North Korean refugees with the arrival of Chinese President Hu Jintao.

They also sent a letter to Hu through the Chinese Embassy demanding that he stop the deportations and help asylum seekers go wherever they wish to.

“An estimated 100,000 to 300,000 North Korean escapees are in China. Between 150 to 300 of them are caught by Chinese police and sent to the North every week,” said the Rev. Kim Kyou-ho, secretary general of Christians for Social Responsibility which organized the rally.

He urged that the inhumane act be stopped immediately.

China after the end of the Beijing Olympic Games has to pay more attention to North Korean refugees’ human rights to raise its profile in the international society, Kim said.

Defectors and civic group members say North Koreans who are repatriated to the Stalinist state face imprisonment, torture and execution.

About 100 North Korean defectors and human rights activists gathered at Cheonggye Square in Seoul for the rally.

They urged China to release human rights activists detained for helping North Koreans escape from the North.

They also demanded preventative measures against prostitution and human trafficking by Chinese near the Chinese-North Korean borders.

North Korean refugees in China should be allowed to leave for other countries, including South Korea, if they wish, they said.

In Washington, North Korean defector Cho Jin-hae has been on a hunger strike since Aug. 2. Cho moved to the United States with her mother and younger sister in March.

She has demanded a stop to defector deportations by China in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington.

I bolded the words “inhumane act” because activists have seemed to failed to convince the Chinese why their actions are inhumane.

I know it. Every North Korean activist knows it. But do the Chinese know it?

I could quote international treaties all day, but China have already interpreted the law to exclude North Koreans as refugees.

So if arguing human rights is an exercise in futility, then what can activists do to convince the Chinese of our position?

From what I observed from the Olympics, there’s only their pocketbook and their Nationalism.