North Korea: migrant troubles

The South Korean feature film 'The Crossing', a fictionalised account of North Koreans making an arduous journey to China, where they then hope to gain passage to the South, opens this week. It may find an unusually receptive audience.

Based on the life of a North Korean defector and his family, the film gives a stark account of the hardships of refugees as they flee famine and persecution. There are an estimated 300,000 North Korean defectors in China, according to human rights groups. Beijing does not recognise them as refugees and, under an agreement with Pyongyang, sends them back to North Korea to face political 're-education' at prison camps.

In South Korea, a change of government may bring about a gradual change in attitude to its northern neighbour. In recent years, centre-left South Korean governments have avoided any criticism of North Korea's human rights record, fearing they may antagonise Pyongyang and endanger Seoul's so-called 'Sunshine Policy' of engagement, which avoids obvious efforts to absorb the North or to undermine its government.

From March, however, the new president of the South, Lee Myung-bak and his party have taken a harsher stance at North Korea: Pyongyang's human rights record was condemned as usual by the UN Human Rights Council on March 27, with South Korea voting where in recent years it has generally abstained. Most South Koreans are said to be indifferent to what happens across the border.

Yet hunger and poverty are probably the main drivers of illicit cross-border movements. A growing international aid effort from 1995 failed to prevent a famine in 1996-98, which probably took a million lives out of the 23 million population. Malnutrition remains endemic, affecting 37% of young children. Pyongyang has not asked this year for its usual fertiliser and rice aid from Seoul and has been strongly critical of the new right-wing government, even though Lee has said he exempts humanitarian assistance from his plan to link future cooperation to North Korea's nuclear compliance.  

North Korea's GDP today is still lower than 20 years ago. On March 7, a recent unification minister in Seoul, Lee Jong-suk, queried the southern Bank of Korea's (BoK) methods in estimating North Korean GDP. Lee reckons per capita income at about 390 dollars, less than half the BoK figure, putting North Korea among the poorest countries in the world.

There have also been reports of increasingly bold protests. The routine cross-border movements to and from China are eroding the regime's quarantine on information. Many North Koreans now know that Chinese and South Koreans live far better. With the new film, South Koreans may this week review their indifference to the plight of their neighbours in the north.