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BEIJING - As the international community struggles to cope with the political ramifications of a nuclear North Korea, a growing exodus of refugees into China is threatening a humanitarian crisis on the Korean peninsula.
It's a crisis that is taking place "almost invisibly" as the world's attention is focused on North Korea's nuclear test on October 9, which led to concerns about whether the secretive Stalinist enclave is stable or on the brink of collapse.
"Clearly, the primary responsibility for the mounting humanitarian tragedy lies with North Korea but the international community has failed to find an effective means of dealing with the situation," said Peter Beck, Korea specialist at the International Crisis Group, which has launched a report called Perilous Journeys: The Plight of North Koreans in China and Beyond.
The group said "the perfect storm" was brewing for famine in the North. This winter was expected to be a cold one and summer floods destroyed a portion of the country's harvest.
This natural disaster combined with less aid due to the nuclear crisis and Pyongyang's refusal to allow charities to monitor distribution, could mean no food this winter, as it did in the mid-1990s when millions died of hunger. Thousands of North Koreans are risking their lives trying to escape their country's hardships in search of a better life.
The report said there were already about 100,000 North Korean asylum seekers hiding in China, many in northeastern China, facing anything from imprisonment to execution if they were deported by Chinese police. Pregnant women who conceive abroad suffer forced abortions.
In his book Aquariums of Pyongyang, North Korean gulag survivor Kang Chol-hwan describes the difficult routes and complex underground networks that defectors must follow to escape to freedom. Kang, who survived the notorious Yodok gulag, was protected by prostitutes in a brothel in Dalian and made his way to the South.
He was one of the lucky ones - China repatriates between 150 and 300 North Koreans every week.
To date, an estimated 9000 North Koreans have made it to South Korea.
In situations that have parallels with East and West Germany before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, defectors say many North Koreans are now aware of the better living standards in the south, having watched videos from the south and heard broadcasts on Radio Free Asia or Voice of America. Increased cross-border trade is also helping information to spread.
The International Crisis Group said the key to improving the situation was China, which is still Pyongyang's main ally, despite a strain on relations since the nuclear test.
It said China should be encouraged to treat the refugees more humanely, by ending forced repatriation and removing fines for those who shield refugees. Also, neighbouring countries should not turn North Koreans crossing from China back to Chinese authorities, but instead contact either South Korea or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
"Having been most vocal about North Korean human rights, the United States and the European Union member states should recognise and accept many more of these people for resettlement," the report said.
China is worried that what is currently a trickle of refugees, if a sizeable one, could become a deluge if North Korea's economy collapses under too-tough sanctions. It insists the North Koreans are illegal immigrants and has recently been building a wire fence on its side of the river border with North Korea.
Many embassies in Beijing have also had wire fences installed in recent years to stop a regular stream of North Korean defectors scaling the walls.
In the last few years, desperate North Koreans have sought asylum in the German and Canadian missions, arriving in the compounds with their hands torn by razor wire and their clothing ripped to shreds.
"We have tried our utmost to give humanitarian treatment to those people, but on the other hand, they have entered Chinese territory illegally. We will deal with them in accordance with domestic and international law," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao.
North Korea was already facing the prospect of another famine after floods wiped out crops in July. But humanitarian aid has dried up because donors are unwilling to contribute food following Pyongyang's ongoing missile and nuclear tests. As a result, the World Food Programme has received only 8 per cent of its budget for North Korea this year.
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