The school is not on the grounds of a diplomatic mission or residence compound and so does not enjoy the rights of inviolability under international low. Still, this move on China's part is still an irregular one considering how on almost twenty previous occasions defectors have been allowed to go to South Korea after making their way into international schools. The Chinese government says it took the step "considering domestic law, international law, and humanitarianism," but the people in question were strongly demanding they be allowed to go to the South and so the action was clearly inconsistent with humanitarianism. The matter is not one to be looked on lightly if it means there has been a change in Chinese policy.
You wonder if the South Korean government did all it could have. It says it consistently asked that the defectors be handed over to it for travel to Seoul, but in fact it was more like a dog that was chasing a chicken and is now staring at it sitting up on a roof. It's sad that the government does not take an approach that gets actively involved from the start in order to accomplish something instead of protesting only after things happen.
Even if there has yet to be international agreement about the status of North Korean defectors, as long as they're not criminals the principle that they should be able to decide where they live according to their own free will must be solidly maintained. Needless to say, the South Korean government must put its diplomatic capabilities to work to back that up. It has already been years since more than a thousand defectors started arriving every year, so it is anachronistic on China's part to define them as "illegal border crossers" and send them to North Korea in such a situation.
The defector issue is a humanitarian one, before having anything to do with political systems and sovereignty. If China is going to take pride in calling itself a country democratic enough to host the Olympics, when it comes to at least humanitarian issues it must not display the kind of behavior that it is now. The South Korean government is also not in a position that frees it from responsibility.
The Hankyoreh, 11 October 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
