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No asylum in Canada for N Korean diplomat
By David Scofield

SEOUL - Canada, one of the world's most generous countries when it comes to immigration and political asylum, has said "no" to the request for refugee status from a defecting North Korean trade official with a high-level posting in China. Still, he won't be deported and might even become a Canadian resident in three years.

Though defector Song-dae Ri, pleading that he wanted freedom for his son, is likely to get a three-year stay and may never have to leave Canada, the case raises serious questions both about humanitarian issues and how to treat defectors who occupied positions of trust and influence in notoriously oppressive regimes.

Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board generated controversy last week by refusing Ri's request for official refugee status, generally known elsewhere as political asylum. His son, now six, was given permission to remain.

"While [Ri] may not have personally committed any atrocities ... I believe that on a balance of probabilities he was aware of the North Korean government's excesses ... and waited 10 years" to leave, said board member Bonnie Milliner in ruling on its behalf.

"He was a high-level North Korean government official with weighty responsibilities," she said, adding that he was "not deserving" of Canada's protection.

China is by far the most important economic and political ally of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Ri was posted to the embassy in Beijing before he defected to Canada with his wife and son in August 2001, saying he wanted to ensure for his child a future free of fear and oppression. He and his wife got out of Beijing using fake South Korean passports that he said he secured through a South Korean businessman.

His wife returned to North Korea and was executed, he said, arguing that he has a well-founded fear of persecution, or execution, if he returns from Toronto. And the Canadian government indicates it agrees that he would probably be executed for treason if he returned; as the case unfolds, Ri may well be eligible for residency in three years.

Those who aid and abet despots not (usually) welcome
Ri's application for political asylum raises issues of eligibility and access that must be addressed by all countries settling the world's legitimate refugees. In Canada the message was clear: non-members of the Pyongyang regime are welcome, but those who aid and abet despots are not - or not usually.

Canada's refugee classifications are among the worlds's most liberal. While helping thousands to acquire new lives free of persecution and fear, immigration officials have also been duped by some who exploited the system for gain or to promote personal, sometimes violent agendas abroad. In 1993, for example, Canadians were stunned to learn that a Somali refugee claimant was sending her US$2,000 monthly welfare allotment back to her husband, a Mogadishu warlord who used the funds to buy weapons and promote violence and instability. It was not the finest hour for Canada's immigration authorities.

The embarrassing incident drove home the necessity of strict adherence to refugee guidelines, specifically those that relate to the handling of former members of unsavory regimes. As a general rule, those who help a regime maintain its grip on power or fortify its ability to oppress its people are not eligible for refugee status. The Somalia example illustrates how well-meaning programs can be perverted into protecting and funding some of the world's most dangerous individuals and reviled leaders.

To some observers, however, Canada's ruling against the North Korean asylum-seeker appeared unnecessarily harsh.

Ri, the trade official, maintains that he was a low-level government functionary, unaware of and unable to counter the injustice and abuse that pervades the system he worked for. His resume, however, suggests otherwise. Ri was a diplomat, a rare find in itself given that North Korea maintains only 16 missions globally. Furthermore, far from functioning on the remote frontiers, Ri was posted to the DPRK's most important trading partner, China.

Within the DPRK foreign-policy arena, his responsibilities were among the most important and his work in "trade" was crucial to North Korea's inner circle. In the case of North Korea, trade might better be described as the acquisition and proliferation of products and services - both legal and illicit - vital for the maintenance of the regime.

Ri's claims risible
Ri declared he was insignificant, a cog in the wheel, merely "number 7 million" in the regime's bureaucratic organization, in which leader Kim Jong-il is No 1. Critics call his statements disingenuous, inviting speculation about what else he might have been less than forthcoming about.

Ri competed to join a government system that classifies at least half the country's population of 26 million as "untrusted" - unreliable or disloyal - but he was awarded an international position of trust within this system that requires an elevated status and party loyalty above reproach. Ri's critics say he personally may not have imprisoned his fellow countrymen in the much-publicized gulags that dot the country, but his 10 years of work, beginning during the most desperate years of North Korea's famine, directly helped his bosses carry out their inhuman policies.

He was - or is - complicit in the system that maintains the DPRK, and it is right that the Canadians acknowledged this, according to Ri's critics. And while these same critics support Canada's rejection of his refugee status application, they deplore the fact that he will remain in Canada, probably for at least three years.

Given Canada's liberal traditions and the Byzantine nature of its citizenship and immigration regulations, there's little chance Ri will be leaving Toronto any time soon. The denial that came from the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) is just the beginning; the next stage is a hearing designed to determine the risk to the applicant upon his return. He, like most seeking political asylum in the West, say they face persecution or death if they return to their native countries.

The IRB has already acknowledged the danger to Ri's life should he return, thus deportation is unlikely.

According to immigration officials, the case will likely end with Ri being granted a three-year stay so that he will remain with his son in Canada. Officially he will be without the benefit of state funds and privileges, though this is a misnomer, as officials agreed that if he demanded health care, for example, he would probably get it. Providing Ri isn't caught associating with the Pyongyang regime, or trying clandestinely to supply his former employers with Canadian secrets, he will be eligible for residency at the end of three years.

Precedent could tempt senior DPRK officials
Observers consider this unfortunate, arguing that the IRB was right to deny his application. If a senior player in the North Korean regime is entitled to refugee benefits, it is very conceivable that others within the regime and perhaps even some of DPRK leader Kim Jong-il's family would avail themselves of their privilege and relative freedom of movement to flee the region. They too could demand refugee status and cite the Ri case as a precedent.

Those with the most blood on their hands are often the most able to flee totalitarian regimes, since the powerful and ignoble are also those with access to the foreign currency and the connections necessary to make good their escape.

The paucity of refugees fleeing North Korea is perverse proof of the integrity of the nation's internal security apparatus and the reluctance of China to allow North Koreans passage through its territory. Well-meaning initiatives like Canada's designed to encourage refugee movement out of the DPRK attract applicants like Ri, the well-heeled minority within the impoverished majority of North Korea. The tragic paradox: the prison-like nature of North Korea ensures that those with the means of arriving on the shores of North America tend to be the oppressors, not the oppressed.

Critics of Canada's denial of asylum contend that the man has a son who already has been admitted legally to Canada. They argue that since Ri's wife reportedly was executed upon her return to North Korea in 2002, to send Ri back would mean the effective orphaning of his son - a reprehensible state of affairs. The only solution, they argue, is to hold their noses and accept a bad situation, not make it worse.

But if his return is virtually impossible, there should not necessarily be any immutable right of people like Ri to asylum in Canada, say critics of Pyongyang and its officials. There are 138 parties to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, the treaty underpinning the rights and defining the nature of international refugees, yet a handful of nations accept the vast majority of the world's refugees, legitimate or not.

If settlement in a third country is not possible for Ri, Canada could tap the knowledge and experience of the former North Korean government official - that's what he was - to expose and disseminate the truth about the DPRK. As a condition of settlement in Canada, Ri could be required to travel nationwide to speak at universities, community centers and libraries, educating the people about the ideology, repression and abuses of North Korea.

At the same time, Ri could raise money to help those most deserving of protection - the destitute North Koreans who huddle in constant fear of deportation in the China-DPRK border region. In sharp contrast to the time he spent working to empower the DPRK and its leadership, Ri's time now should be spent working to alleviate the suffering of his countrymen. As a man who benefited greatly from a system that regularly demonstrates depraved indifference to human life, this would seem to be the least he could do.

David Scofield is a lecturer at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, Seoul.

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