Eyes Above The Waves

Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Repatriate Kiwi. Hacker.

Tuesday 3 January 2017

How China Can Pressure North Korea

This CNN article claims that there's very little even China can do to influence North Korea. I wonder why that is, because (though I'm relatively uninformed) it seems to me China could have a big impact on North Korea by reforming their policy for handling North Korean escapees.

Currently Chinese policy is that any escapees are returned to North Korea. This is inhumane because those returnees are jailed and often tortured, not to mention the hardships endured by escapees trying to reach South Korea traveling in secret. I understand that China doesn't want to host a flood of North Korean refugees, but I don't know why they couldn't coordinate with South Korea to efficiently ship any and all North Korean escapees to South Korea. (Maybe South Korea doesn't want this, but they could be made to accept it.) This would probably lead to people pouring out of North Korea, which would put significant pressure on the regime. Not only would this give political leverage, but it's also a far more humane policy.

Comments

Unknown
I guess most people in North Korea still believe their leader. It is very common for a country like North Korea since there is no much information from out-side. They may even don't know/or believe they could be better in a different way. It is the reason why countries that you believe EVIL still be alive. So, I don't believe helping escapees would do anything different to a country like North Korea.
Robert
I visited South Korea and did the tour of the DMZ. On the tour with us was a woman who'd escaped from North Korea, who told us that a lot of North Koreans do understand what's really happening in the outside world. A lot of digital media are smuggled around despite the harsh penalties for people being caught with it.