Six North Korean defectors held in a Southeast Asian country have arrived in the United States seeking asylum. This is the first time the U.S. has accepted ordinary defectors from North Korea. Its basis for doing so is the 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act. Until now, the U.S. has given asylum in only very exceptional cases, mainly to former high-ranking political heavyweights from Pyongyang.
Where a defector chooses to settle is up to the individual as well as the policies of the country he chooses. However, South Korea is and always has been the only country that receives North Korean defectors without any restrictions. More than 1,000 defectors have come to the South every year since 2002, while only several hundred have gone to all other countries combined. The U.S. has been particularly passive about accepting defectors.
The problem here is that the change in America's attitude has not been the result of a humanitarian awakening. Rather, the change is connected to an effort to apply more pressure on Pyongyang. Ever since the joint statement issued in Beijing on September 19 of last year, hard-liners in the U.S. have been placing human rights and "illegal activities" such as counterfeiting and narcotics at the forefront of discussions about North Korea. The U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights, Jay Lefkowitz, even uses the wages paid to Northern workers in the Gaeseong complex as material for his rhetorical attacks on North Korea.
The decision to accept defectors this week can be characterized as being in the same context. The goal is to suddenly accept a few defectors after all this time and, by doing so, create the greatest political effect. Such "defector politics" will not help the issue, and it will not help to restart the six party talk process, which has been stalled for half a year.
Currently there are tens of thousands of defectors in China and other East Asian nations. In providing them with comfortable places to live, what is needed is not loud rhetorical offensives but composed and substantive international cooperation.
U.S. defector policy too political |
