Human rights groups are calling on the international community to increase pressure on the Chinese government to halt the forcible repatriation of North Korean defectors.

Upon return to North Korea, defectors are branded as traitors and face detention in political prison camps, torture and even execution.

In the most recent repatriation, an estimated 200 defectors, who had been caught in police sweeps and held in China's Jilin Province, were sent back to North Korea on April 26, according to the Seoul-based rights group the North Korean People's Liberation Front.

The group's claims were based on information from other defectors still in China and tally with similar reports from other groups as well as South Korean government sources.

"We know that 2,000 North Korean refugees were forcibly repatriated between August and September 2023, and through this policy of refoulement, China aids and abets the Kim family regime that is committing crimes against humanity," said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

'Credible fear of persecution'

"When they are sent back to the North, they face a credible fear of persecution," Scarlatoiu told DW.

Beijing, however, insists on regarding the defectors as "illegal economic migrants" instead of individuals escaping a repressive regime and, often, starvation.

"China is continuing to protect the Kim Jong Un regime," Scarlatoiu said, adding that the international community, the UN Special Rapporteur on the issue, and the UN Human Rights Council "must continue to highlight this issue."

This year marks 75 years of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Pyongyang, with 2024 declared the "year of North Korea-China friendship" in both countries. Some see Beijing's repatriation of defectors that the North wishes to make an example of, so that others do not also try to escape, as a chance to deepen that alliance.

"I think one of the reasons China is sending defectors back is because of Beijing's desire for close relations with the North Korean regime, especially as President Xi Jinping is promoting socialism and alliances of like-minded nations so strongly," said Lee Ae-ran, who fled the North with her family in 1997 and now lives in Seoul.

A defector's experience

Lee managed to cross the border from North Korea into China and then get to safety in a country in Southeast Asia in a mere 15 days. She then continued on to   South Korea.

Today, she says the North Korean regime has made it much harder for people to get out of the country – there are more minefields and barbed wire fences, and guards have orders to shoot-to-kill anyone suspected of attempting to flee – but it also sees defectors as another way of making money.

"Repatriated defectors are punished differently at different times," she told DW. "Some are sent to political prison camps, but more recently we have learned that defectors or their families are forced to donate 'loyalty money' and those that make large donations are not punished. It is a form of extortion from defectors."

Dissident media that use networks of underground contacts in areas of China close to the border and even inside North Korea say the resumption of repatriations since the reopening of the border – closed ostensibly by Pyongyang in 2020 to keep the coronavirus at bay – has caused concern among undocumented defectors attempting to avoid the authorities.

Defectors "feel more frightened and insecure than ever about being repatriated because the closer North Korea and China are, the greater the risk they will be repatriated," a source in China told the dissident Seoul-based Daily NK online newspaper.

The concern is that once all the defectors detained during the border closure have been sent back, the Chinese authorities will step up efforts to locate North Koreans who have married local people in an effort to legitimize their presence in China, even if such maneuvers offer scant legal protection.

Geopolitical considerations

China has in the past been willing to overlook North Koreans who do not cause problems, but defectors are now cautioning each other that the Chinese authorities will take a hard line against any who appear to be attempting to get to Southeast Asia as a stepping stone to South Korea.

Song Young-Chae, a South Korean academic and activist with the Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, says the current closer relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang is a result of broader geopolitical considerations in the Asia-Pacific region.

"China and the US are becoming increasingly confrontational, so Beijing is looking for more allies and to have closer ties with existing allies," he told DW. "That rivalry is also good for North Korea, which will accept support and help from anywhere. So, both sides are using the other for their own benefit," he added.

"It must also be pointed out that there is instability in the North Korean regime, and they do not want their own people to know about defectors as that might encourage more to also try to leave," he said.

Harsh punishments

"And that is why the punishments are so harsh," Song added. "It's very sad and it's difficult to think about, but we have heard many reports of defectors who are sent back being tortured, being forced to work in very harsh conditions, of being sent to concentration camps, of forced abortions and even the risk of execution."

And that is why, Song said, more needs to be done to encourage Beijing to halt the repatriations.

Edited by: Shamil Shams