Tag Archives: Refugees

SEOUL South Korea has spent decades screening refugees from a hostile neighbor but some enemy agents handle to get via, underlining the challenges Western nations face in dealing with a far larger influx of individuals escaping the war in Syria.

Seoul uses lie detectors, interrogation and a screening approach that consists of maintaining men and women in solitary confinement to catch North Korean agents among genuine asylum seekers.

Nonetheless, amongst 2003 and 2013, of the 49 North Korean spies apprehended in the South, 21 entered the country posing as refugees, according to the country’s justice ministry.

“The question of spies slipping via is usually a dilemma, and we need to make the procedure much more meticulous and sophisticated,” stated Shin Kyung-min, the ranking opposition member of the South Korean parliament’s intelligence committee.

“But it really is not like we can cease taking in North Korean defectors due to the fact of that,” Shin told Reuters.

There are increasing calls in the United States and in Europe to bar tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war following this month’s Paris attacks simply because of concerns that vetting processes are not stringent enough and that extremists preparing attacks could slip by means of.

Far more than 1,000 North Koreans defect to the South every year and are held for up to 180 days although they are screened. If they clear that, the refugees are transferred to a resettlement complex, which they can not leave, for an additional 12 weeks to support them adjust to life in the South.

New North Korean arrivals to the South, who generally enter via a third country, are brought to a facility in Siheung on the southern outskirts of Seoul. There, they are separated for questioning on their backgrounds and lives in the North, spending time in solitary but comfy rooms.

No exception is created for households or kids, who are taken from their parents and face comparable questioning, according to a civic group.

“It was like writing my autobiography,” stated a 59-year-old female defector who spent 3 months at the interrogation center from 2012 and asked that she not be named simply because she is not supposed to talk about the procedure.

“I talked about my whole life in chronological order and got checked,” she told Reuters.

“I came right here to alter my life so there was nothing at all that I was afraid of.”

Lie detectors are employed as a standard tool, as many defectors from the isolated and impoverished North are undocumented, a former National Intelligence Service official said.

A standard interrogation begins with the defector’s address, and the plan has built a database with places, names and other specifics to evaluate with their story, Shin, the lawmaker stated.

The National Intelligence Service declined to comment for this report.

The plan has succeeded in weeding out about 120 bogus defectors and 14 spies, local media reports final year mentioned, citing intelligence officials. Fake defectors are believed primarily to consist of ethnic Korean citizens of mainland China. The numbers could not be independently verified.

Those located not to be North Korean defectors are deported, while those determined to be spies are prosecuted, according to South Korean authorities.

SUBMARINES AND GUNFIGHTS

Pyongyang is believed to have begun sending spies posing as defectors to the South in the late 1990s when large batches of refugees fled a massive, deadly famine.

Before that, South Korea sometimes caught armed spies who had infiltrated from across the militarized border, or by way of modest submarines in the dark of evening. Some confrontations among North Korean agents and South Korean security forces ended in deadly gunfights.

“It is not an simple approach due to the fact they are disguised as refugees, highly trained, dispatched by counter-South espionage agencies,” stated Jun Ok-hyun, a former deputy director of South Korea’s spy agency who retired in 2009.

“The a lot more defectors come, the stronger the evaluation process must be simply because it could be less complicated for North Korea to send spies as fake refugees,” he told Reuters.

Once refugees are cleared by intelligence officials, they move to a resettlement center exactly where they learn sensible aspects of life in the modern, capitalist South, such as making use of an ATM and the differences in neighborhood usage of a frequent language that has evolved separately in the course of seven decades of division.

They also get wellness checks, nutritional assistance and vocational instruction.

When defectors leave the resettlement center and move into the basic population, police officers are assigned to protect and manage them, according to police officials who declined to elaborate.

Shin, the opposition lawmaker, noted that most North Koreans entering the South are genuine refugees and stated the screening plan is “really impressive”.

“The challenge for us is to choose out the spies acquiring increasingly sophisticated in fabricating their stories.”

(Editing by Tony Munroe and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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