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Mongolia detains 4 North Koreans who illegally crossed into country from China www.nknews.org
Mongolia detained four North Koreans this month for illegally entering the country, immigration authorities announced Wednesday, in a rare press release from a country that usually helps defectors by allowing them to travel elsewhere once they cross the border.
“On the 10th of May, four citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea were found illegally crossing from the People’s Republic of China to our country,” the General Authority for Border Protection stated in a press release that has since been deleted from its website.
“These individuals have been transferred to legal facilities,” the agency added.
The border authority did not specify whether the North Koreans intended to defect and Mongolian authorities did not respond to an NK News question about whether they will be repatriated to the DPRK.
Mongolia is about 500 miles (800 km) from North Korea and is a known destination for North Koreans seeking to defect. Separating the two countries is China, which arrests defectors as “economic migrants” and sends them back.
If Mongolia repatriates the DPRK nationals to North Korea, they will likely be “subjected to torture and ill-treatment, forced labor and gender-based violence,” according to the U.N. special envoy for DPRK human rights Elizabeth Salmon in a recent report.
Mongolia may have publicly announced the arrest because North Korea’s foreign minister might visit Mongolia soon on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of diplomatic ties Anthony Rinna, an expert on DPRK-Central Asia relations, told NK News.
“Mongolia has, as a matter of principle, always tried to maintain balanced ties between the two Koreas as part of its broader strategy of maintaining relative equilibrium between China, Russia and the West,” Rinna explained.
In response to NK News questions about the arrest by Mongolia, South Korea’s foreign ministry said it could not confirm any details but that it is making “diplomatic efforts to ensure that North Korean defectors staying abroad can safely and quickly go where they want to go without being forced to return to North Korea against their will.”
Mongolia has previously allowed defectors to go to the South Korean embassy where they can apply to be sent to the South, though it is unclear if that is what will happen this time. Mongolia has an inconsistent record of how it deals with DPRK nationals, sometimes choosing to repatriate North Koreans.
“In light of Mongolia’s outreach to the DPRK, Mongolian authorities may have arrested the defectors as a sign of goodwill toward Pyongyang, especially as Mongolia’s previous status as a relatively popular destination for North Korean defectors has caused friction between Pyongyang and Ulaanbaatar,” Rinna said.
The number of defectors reaching South Korea has plummeted since the outbreak of COVID-19 due to austere border closures in the DPRK and China’s own anti-pandemic movement restrictions.
Only 34 North Korean defectors reached South Korea between January and March this year, the most in a three-month period since 2020 but still far fewer than before the pandemic.
Only a handful of the defectors who have reached South Korea during the pandemic crossed the DPRK border, according to experts. Most were apparently already in third countries — like Mongolia — before seeking to resettle in the South, including overseas workers.
More than 1,000 defectors made it to South Korea in 2019 before the pandemic, and nearly 3,000 arrived per year in the late 2000s.
Edited by Arius Derr
Published Date:2023-05-21
