U.S. takes in N. Korea defectors

SEOUL, South Korea – In a cloak-and-dagger operation, six North Korean defectors arrived in the United States over the weekend in the first effort sponsored by the U.S. government to give political asylum to North Koreans.

The U.S. State Department has kept tight wraps on the operation, but activists confirmed that the refugees had flown in late Friday and had been taken immediately to an undisclosed location for debriefing.

The four women and two men had been living clandestinely in China, where some of the women were forced into prostitution, human rights activists said.

“This is a very good and compassionate thing for the United States to be doing,” Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who helped obtain asylum for the refugees, said in a telephone interview.

The 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act directed that the United States grant political asylum to refugees fleeing the regime of Kim Jong Il.

But until now, nobody had been admitted, in part because of objections from South Korea and China that such efforts could hamper six-nation talks aimed at prompting North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons.

With the talks now long stalled, conservatives in recent months have been lobbying the Bush administration to take a more active role in helping the refugees.

The Korean American Church Coalition, among other Korean groups, has offered to provide shelter and help assimilate up to 1,000 North Korean refugees.

“We are hoping these are the first of many brought to the United States,” said Adrian Hong, a Washington-based activist and founder of Liberty in North Korea.

The six refugees brought in over the weekend had been smuggled out of China by Chun Ki-won, a pastor based in Seoul who operates an underground railroad helping North Korean refugees.

They came through a country in southeast Asia that has not been identified to avoid endangering others trying to escape.

As many as 100,000 North Koreans are believed to have fled into China.

But the Chinese, to avoid offending their old communist ally in Pyongyang, routinely arrest and repatriate the North Koreans.

Many of the North Korean women are trafficked into prostitution or forced marriages to Chinese peasants.