NKoreans seek asylum at South consulate: activist

[March 09, 2010]  SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Two North Koreans who fled poor conditions at a Russian logging camp and later worked odd jobs sought asylum Tuesday at the South Korean consulate in an eastern Russian city, according to a human rights activist and news reports.

The former lumberjacks climbed over the fence of the South Korean mission in the city of Vladivostok, said Rev. Peter Chung, head of the Seoul-based human rights group Justice for North Korea.

Chung said that the two would demand to be sent to the United States, saying he knew about their plans through a member of his group in Russia.

The North Koreans, both 46, escaped logging camps in the Russian Far East, fleeing poor working conditions, and toiled as day laborers by moving around Siberia, Chung said. They later became Christians, he added.

It was not clear when they escaped from the camps, though one went to Russia in 2001 and the other returned to Russia in 2006 after having spent time there in the 1990s, Chung said.

They decided to seek asylum now because they feared their religious activities would be exposed by two fellow North Korean loggers who were repatriated to the North in January, Chung said.

North Koreans have long been a source of labor in Russian logging camps. Most work there legally and often send their wages back home, providing the impoverished, isolated regime with much needed foreign currency.

Russian government figures from 2007, the latest year available, put the number of North Korean migrant workers at 32,600, with the bulk of them working in logging.

Two Russian agencies reported accounts similar to Chung's. The RIA Novosti news agency said that two North Koreans climbed the fence, ran past the guards and entered the consulate seeking political asylum. It quoted unidentified sources in the provincial government. ITAR-Tass also reported the asylum bid, citing diplomatic sources it did not identify.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the alleged asylum attempt, citing policy.

Kuk Jang-hyun, an official at South Korea's consulate in Vladivostok, declined to comment. Sylvia Etian, public affairs officer at the U.S. Consulate in the Russian city, said she had no information.

A spokeswoman for city police in Vladivostok would not comment.

In recent years, thousands of North Koreans facing hunger and repression at home have made the long and risky journey into China and on to Southeast Asia. Many seek eventual asylum in South Korea.

More than 18,000 North Koreans have arrived in the South since the Korean War, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry. The war ended with a 1953 cease-fire that has never been replaced with a peace treaty.

Some refugees hope to go all the way to the United States after Washington began accepting North Koreans under a 2004 act that mandates assistance to refugees fleeing the communist regime.

More than 90 North Korean refugees in China and Southeast Asian countries have been accepted into the U.S. since 2004, said the Rev. Chun Ki-won, head of Seoul-based missionary group Durihana Mission, citing what he said was a U.S. State Department figure.

Chun has assisted North Korean refugees wishing to settle in the U.S.

[Associated Press; By KWANG-TAE KIM]

Associated Press writers Hongkeun Jeon in Seoul, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Liya Khabarova in Vladivostok contributed to this report.

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