China Worries About North Korea Refugees

Anne Applebaum writes at Slate:

Instead of closing the 800-mile Chinese-North Korean border to goods, the Chinese could open it to people. According to U.S. government estimates, between 10,000 and 30,000 North Korean refugees have slipped across the border in recent years and now live illegally in China.

According to some independent estimates, that number is closer to 300,000. Whatever the correct figure, it's clear that a lot more would join them if the Chinese weren't so vigilant about sending North Korean refugees back to face torture and imprisonment.

Just this past week, while no one was paying much attention, China increased that vigilance, adding new barbed-wire fences and even deporting some local residents from the border region. One Chinese official apparently told a Hong Kong newspaper that the regime is girding itself to repulse a possible influx of 500,000 refugees. Were such a number really to flee, it could provoke the collapse of the regime.

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