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Tuesday April 24, 10:47 PM3 N. Korean teen defectors freed from Lao prison: Japanese NGO(Kyodo) _ Three North Korean teenage defectors were released Tuesday from a detention center in Laos and given shelter in the South Korean Embassy there, according to a Tokyo-based nongovernmental organization that has been working to secure their safe passage to the third country for resettlement."The three North Korean orphans were released from the jail in Vientiane, Laos, and the consul accompanied them to the South Korean Embassy in Laos," Life Funds for North Korean Refugees said in a statement. "They appear to be out of danger of repatriation now that they are under the protection of the South Korean Embassy," the NGO said. The North Koreans, aged between 12 and 17, were arrested by Lao border guard police at the Mekong River in November last year and jailed in the Lao capital Vientiane for illegally trying to cross into Thailand via Laos. Japanese and South Korean NGOs had expressed concern through a petition drive that if they were handed over to North Korean officials in Laos, they would be sent back home to face severe punishment. A local LFNKR rescue staff member who visited them in jail at the end of March found that they wished to go and settle in the United States, according to the Japanese NGO. It identified them as 13-year-old Choi Hyang, her 12-year-old brother Choi Hyok and their female traveling companion Choi Hyang Mi, 17. According to the NGO's petition, the sister and brother, who lost their mother to starvation in 1999, had been tossed out into the streets by desperate relatives and had to beg for food to survive. In 2002, they fled to China, but their illegal status made staying there unsafe and denied them medical treatment or education, so they decided to go to Thailand via Laos. As for Choi, the eldest of the three, she and her mother left North Korea in 2001 to escape starvation. In China, her mother was sold into a forced marriage to a Chinese man and Choi herself also became a victim of human trafficking but was helped out of the situation by a kind Korean Chinese, the NGO said. South Korea's Yonhap News Agency on Tuesday quoted Lee Ho Taek, secretary general of the International Campaign to Block the Repatriation of North Korean Refugees, as saying all three "are now wishing to come to South Korea and they'll come here before long." Yonhap noted that in recent years, the number of North Koreans defecting to South Korea has sharply increased as economic conditions and political oppression have worsened in the reclusive country. In total, it said, more than 10,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a fragile truce. The three North Korean teens will be the first North Korean defectors to come to South Korea from Laos, Lee reportedly said. |
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