[Mb-civic] White House Puts Face on North Korean Human Rights - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

White House Puts Face on North Korean Human Rights

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 19, 2006; A01

She showed up at a school in a coastal city in China nearly five months 
ago and begged for help. Instead, she was deported to her native North 
Korea and never seen again.

Now the case of Kim Chun Hee has made its way to the desk of President 
Bush, threatening to complicate the first White House visit of China's 
leader tomorrow and further irritate an irritable relationship.

Urged on by evangelical supporters from his home town and other 
activists elsewhere, Bush has taken a personal interest in human rights 
in North Korea and decided to make an example of Kim's asylum case. 
Alerted to her situation by a South Korean lawmaker, the White House 
issued a rare statement last month pronouncing itself "gravely 
concerned" about her fate and chastising China for sending her back.

The story of how an obscure instance of individual hardship came to 
figure in a meeting between two of the world's most powerful leaders 
sheds light on the crosscurrents of U.S. foreign policy under Bush. The 
son of a former envoy to Beijing, Bush has worked to build stable 
relations with China and wants its help on urgent priorities such as 
curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions. Yet the same president has proclaimed 
expanding freedom to be the guiding principle of his foreign policy, 
with the goal of "ending tyranny in our world."

So as diplomats and bureaucrats throughout the U.S. government in recent 
weeks assembled briefing books on the Chinese currency and the trade 
deficit and other issues of importance to Bush's business backers, 
another corner of government, much smaller, has worked to put on the 
table China's treatment of desperate North Koreans who slip across the 
border.

They have been aided in that quest by a growing movement of Christian 
activists who lately have adopted North Korea as a cause, much as they 
earlier did Sudan, and pushed Congress into passing legislation intended 
to make human rights in Asia's last Stalinist outpost a higher U.S. 
priority.

"We just feel this is what we're commanded to do," said Deborah Fikes, 
executive director of the Midland Ministerial Alliance from the 
president's Texas home town. "If you're a follower of Christ, this 
should be one of your number one priorities, speaking out for the 
oppressed, and I can't think of anybody more oppressed than the North 
Koreans."

The case of Kim offered an opportunity to put their concern front and 
center. Never before has the Bush White House singled out a North Korean 
asylum seeker by name and held Beijing responsible for her fate, 
according to U.S. officials and human rights workers. The timing was 
especially pointed, coming just before the arrival of Chinese President 
Hu Jintao, who will be greeted tomorrow by a 21-gun salute on the South 
Lawn of the White House.

Administration officials said Bush feels strongly about the situation. 
"He's taken a very personal interest and a fairly significant interest 
in the issue of human rights," said Jay Lefkowitz, whom Bush appointed 
last year as a special envoy for human rights in North Korea. "He 
fundamentally believes the character of the North Korean regime is 
defined by its human rights conduct."

The White House statement cheered many who have been working on the 
issue even though they said it represents just a fraction of what should 
be done. "I'm glad they did it, but it's not enough," said Rep. Frank R. 
Wolf (R-Va.), who wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 
February seeking more action by the administration.

Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch said: "The real question is whether 
the president's going to actually say anything to Hu. I'm happy they did 
it. But do they see this as a signal of what they're going to do or as a 
substitute?"

Not much is known about Kim beyond the bare bones of her travails. An 
account pieced together from a South Korean lawmaker, a U.S. diplomat in 
the region, South Korean media and her sister suggests Kim's experience 
resembles those of many seeking to escape the North.

Kim, 31, is popularly known by a pseudonym. Her real name has been 
reported in South Korean newspapers as Lee Chun Sil. North Korean 
authorities put her in prison for eight months after other family 
members escaped to the South. Her 5-year-old son died during her 
captivity. She managed to cross into China last September and on Nov. 30 
tried to enter a school for Koreans in the Chinese city of Dalian on the 
Yellow Sea, hoping to win asylum and be sent to Seoul to join relatives. 
But the school kicked her out.

Usually a North Korean asylum seeker who manages to get into a South 
Korean school or diplomatic facility in China is allowed to go to South 
Korea after several months of waiting, while those captured on the 
outside are often sent back. So Kim made her way to Beijing, where she 
tried to enter another Korean school on Dec. 2, but Chinese authorities 
arrested her. Her sister in Seoul began faxing letters of appeal to 
politicians and human rights workers around the world.

A week later, Lefkowitz attended a conference in Seoul dedicated to 
North Korean human rights. A lawmaker he met there, Kim Moon Soo, sent 
him a letter dated Dec. 16 asking him to help Kim. "Do you think it 
would be possible for you to use any influence you can to free the North 
Korean woman?" he wrote.

What happened next soured U.S. officials on China. U.S., South Korean 
and U.N. officials all began pressing China not to deport Kim to North 
Korea, noting Beijing's obligations under the U.N. convention on 
refugees of 1951 and its 1967 protocol. The Chinese responded that the 
case was under review and told U.N. officials that she would probably be 
released on the occasion of the visit of Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high 
commissioner for refugees, who visited China from March 19 to 23.

But according to the U.S. diplomat, who spoke on the condition of 
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, Beijing had already 
sent Kim back to North Korea even as it was promising her release and 
informed the U.S. Embassy of her deportation on March 24, the day after 
Guterres left. "The Chinese basically misled us," the diplomat said.

Now no one is sure what has happened to Kim. Many defectors who are 
returned to North Korea face prison or death, according to human rights 
groups. "I don't know whether she is alive or dead," her sister said by 
telephone, asking not to be identified for security reasons.

Fikes said Kim's case became an important example for activists, who 
made their concern known to the White House and State Department. Six 
days after the embassy was informed of her fate, the White House issued 
its statement. "The United States is gravely concerned about China's 
treatment of Kim Chun-Hee," it said, reminding Beijing of "China's 
obligations as a party" to U.N. conventions.

Lefkowitz said the White House highlighted Kim's case because she 
offered a rare face to a broader problem. "A lot of what goes on over 
there is shrouded in such secrecy," he said. "The North Koreans have 
made it very, very hard to get out. Over the years, a lot of people have 
been sent back over the border. In this instance, we had a name. It was 
very appropriate for the international community to call it out."

Bush has expressed visceral distaste for North Korea's autocratic 
leader, Kim Jong Il, calling him a "tyrant" who runs "concentration 
camps" and saying he "loathes" him for the way he treats his people. 
Last year, Bush invited to the White House defector Kang Chol Hwan after 
reading his memoir, "The Aquariums of Pyongyang," recounting 10 years of 
eating rats in a North Korean prison.

"This is a topic he raises frequently, not just with leaders from Asia 
but around the world," said Michael Green, the president's former Asia 
adviser. "He cares deeply about it. It's not just about Kim Jong Il. 
It's the fact that these kinds of horrors happen on this kind of scale 
in our day and age."

But Wolf and others complain that personal commitment is not translated 
into enough action. In 2004, Congress passed the North Korean Human 
Rights Act, which created Lefkowitz's position. But the administration 
has not designated money to implement the law or offered asylum to any 
North Korean, according to a Feb. 21 letter to Rice signed by Wolf and 
eight other lawmakers.

Some administration officials said the State Department is more focused 
on North Korea's nuclear arms and has not made human rights a priority. 
"He is completely right," one official said of Wolf's criticism. Another 
official said "it's been a struggle" to get the administration to pay 
attention. During a White House briefing on Monday discussing issues at 
tomorrow's Bush-Hu summit, no official mentioned North Korean refugees.

Human rights groups and evangelical activists vowed to press until they 
do. "We intend to carry through on this," said Richard Cizik, vice 
president for governmental affairs at the National Association of 
Evangelicals. "The forthcoming coalition is going to be stronger than 
ever and we don't intend to lose. This is a major movement. . . . We 
have a left-right coalition that bar none will move Washington, and it's 
got China in the headlights."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/18/AR2006041801820.html
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