Yoon Seok-Youl
President of the Republic of Korea Cheong Wa Dae
22 Itaewon-ro
Yongsan-gu
Seoul
Republic of Korea 04383
15 July, 2022
Dear President Yoon Seok-Youl,
May we firstly congratulate you on your election and inauguration as President of the Republic of Korea.
We are writing to express our deep sadness and concern about the recently published photographs, released by the Ministry of Unification, regarding the repatriation of two North Korean fishermen to North Korea on 7 November 2019.
Over many years we have all heard the testimonies of many North Korean escapees who have been forcibly repatriated by the Chinese regime. We have each heard first-hand their terrifying accounts of imprisonment, torture, beatings, sexual violence, slavery and forced labour, and eye-witness accounts of some prisoners dying in prison cells. Those who endure or witness such horrors carry the deep trauma resulting from grave human rights violations for their rest of lives.
The photographs revealed the terrified and traumatised faces of these two fishermen who arrived at the Military Demarcation Line at the village of Panmunjom. They had been repatriated against their will, and were forcibly handed over to the North Korean regime. These two men knew what consequences would await them in North Korea, including potentially public execution or certain imprisonment.
Even if these two fishermen were “heinous criminals” as stated by Ministry of Unification spokesman Lee Sang-min in 2019, after only three days of investigation, they were still entitled to due process, legal representation and justice under the South Korean Constitution, which recognises all North Koreans as citizens of South Korea. Indeed, having arrived in South Korea, they were entitled to be granted the right to live in South Korea and be protected by its legal system.
Furthermore, there is no legal agreement or extradition treaty between Pyongyang and Soul. So the question arises, on what basis were they repatriated?
It was only three years ago, that we, representing groups in the United Kingdom working for North Korean people’s freedom and democracy, wrote to our then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and President Moon Jae-In to express our concerns about the first deportation of two fishermen to a country that has been condemned by the United Nations as having committed systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.
It was only three years ago, that we, representing groups in the United Kingdom working for North Korean people’s freedom and democracy, wrote to our then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and President Moon Jae-in to express our concerns about the first deportation of two fishermen to a country that has been condemned by the United Nations as having committed systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.
We are now writing to you to urge your new government to investigate this case, to assess who ordered the repatriation of these two men and why, and to hold those responsible accountable for undermining South Korea’s values of the rule of law, democracy and its international obligations to uphold human rights norms and principles.
Yours sincerely,
Lord Alton of Liverpool, Co-chair All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea Timothy Cho, Inquiry Clerk, All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea
Benedict Rogers, Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission & Senior Analyst, East Asia, at CSW
David Campanale, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate Ji-Hyun Park, North Korean Human Rights Activist
WSJ report:
SEOUL—The release of photographs showing two North Koreans resisting a forced repatriation to the Kim Jong Un regime in November 2019 has catalyzed fresh legal scrutiny over South Korea’s handling of the matter.
The deportation of the two North Korean men, who were suspected of killing 16 fellow fishermen, represented the first such action by South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War. At the time, South Korea was led by President Moon Jae -in, a left-leaning politician who favored engagement with Pyongyang—a stance that opposition lawmakers and human rights groups said gave priority to peace talks over principles.
Now a new conservative South Korean administration, which took office in May and backs a tougher line with the Kim regime, is reassessing the incident with a different eye. The country’s Unification Ministry, in a reversal from its 2019 assessment, said this week there was a “clear problem” in sending the two men back to North Korea.
The repatriation represents a “crime against humanity,” the office of South Korean President Yoon Suk -yeol said Wednesday, condemning what it called a horrendous incident. The Yoon administration said it would conduct a thorough investigation.
The statement followed the unification ministry’s release of photographs that showed one of the deported men physically resisting being handed to North Korean authorities at Panmunjom, a “truce village” in the Korean demilitarized zone. In another photo, four South Korean officials appeared to struggle to force the man over the border, dragging him by the arms.
North Koreans who attempt to flee the country are subject to punishment. It couldn’t be determined what became of the two deported men. But defectors and human rights groups say it is likely that the two men would have been tortured or executedwithout a fair trial in North Korea.
The two North Korean fishermen were captured near the eastern sea border after their boat drifted into South Korean waters. They confessed to killing 16 fellow crew members and expressed a desire to defect, the South Korean government said at the time. The Moon administration said then that the men’s intentions to defect were insincere given their murder confessions—and deported them five days after taking them into custody.
North Korean defectors, upon arriving in South Korea, are typically held for up to a month for a period of investigation and debriefing with Seoul’s intelligence officials.
Human rights groups said the swift deportation denied their right to a fair trial. During a visit to Seoul last month, Tomas Ojea Quintana,
the United Nations special rapporteur on North Korea’s human rights, said Seoul had an obligation to deal with the fishermen in the South Korean justice system.
Mr. Moon couldn’t be reached immediately for comment but his party defended the repatriation decision as legal. The fishermen hadn’t willingly defected to the South, but had been captured while fleeing, Kim Byung-joo, a Democratic Party lawmaker from Mr. Moon’s party, said during a Wednesday press conference. “The law states that protection may not be extended to nonpolitical criminals,” he said.
South Korea’s spy agency filed a criminal complaint last week against Suh Hoon, who was the chief intelligence official when the repatriation occurred. In the complaint, the spy agency accused the official of falsifying documents and ordering a premature end to an internal probe of the deportation. Mr. Suh couldn’t be reached, though recently said he would participate in any investigation.
On Wednesday, prosecutors raided the state intelligence agency, seizing documents, as part of the investigation.
A North Korean propaganda website this week called the renewed focus on the repatriation incident a “petty act of political revenge” by the Yoon administration but didn’t comment in detail about Pyongyang’s stance on the fishermen.
The photos released by the unification ministry were “shocking and cruel,” said Ji Seong-ho, a defector-turned-lawmaker for Mr. Yoon’s conservative People Power Party. “The Moon administration knew the fishermen would be tortured and killed brutally if they were returned, yet they set precedent instilling fear in North Korean defectors.”
