Mick Hartley

From South Korea's Chosun Ilbo: 

China abruptly repatriated about 600 North Korean defectors to North Korea on Monday night, sources said Wednesday.

The defectors had been detained in prisons in Jilin and Liaoning provinces since they were caught trying to flee to South Korea during the coronavirus lockdown and include relatives of South Korean prisoners of war in the North.

The 600 were surreptitiously sent back to the North through five border posts in Hunchun, Tumen, Changbai and Nanping in Jilin and Dandong in Liaoning. China had sent back a handful of defectors to the North since it lifted COVID restrictions, but nothing on this scale and in such a concerted operation, human rights activists said.

"We've heard from our source in the Chinese police that Chinese authorities put the defectors in trucks and sent them back to the North under cover of darkness between around 6 and 8 p.m. Monday as if in a military operation," said Joo Ok-kyung of Light of Freedom, a defectors rescue group. "It seems that the North and China agreed in advance to repatriate them right after the Asian Games ended."

"For security reasons, Chinese authorities told defectors in prisons to prepare for travel only a few hours before they were repatriated," another source said. "This gave their relatives in China and South Korea no time to do anything for them."

A diplomatic source said, "This seems to be a gift to the North Korean regime from China on the eve of the 78th anniversary of the North Korean Workers Party" on Tuesday.

The UN and human rights groups estimate that more than 2,000 defectors have been detained in prisons across China since the COVID pandemic. It seems that the latest incident is part of a Chinese plan for their repatriation that began after lockdown was lifted. Once they are sent back to the North, defectors face being incarcerated in prisons or political prison camps.

"The North Korean regime is desperate to prevent news and information about the outside world from spreading to North Koreans through repatriated defectors," the rights group Justice for North Korea said. "It is certain that the human rights of the repatriated defectors will be cruelly violated."