The man who fears everyone

Will Russia send a refugee to die to North Korea?

North Korean citizen Kim (whose name has been altered because he considers his life to be in danger) has been in Russia since 2013, awaiting a decision by the Federal Migration Service on his refugee status. The agency turned him down yet again last month, on January 26, which means Kim could be deported back to North Korea, where he is likely to be sent to an internment camp and even executed. Meduza special correspondent Daniil Turovsky looks at his past escapes, his illegal border crossings, his detention in a “death camp,” and his work as yard-keeper and cook in Moscow.

On a winter day in 1997, a 17-year-old teenager hurried across a frozen river. Behind him, on the other bank, he left North Korea. At the time, the country was suffering through its second consecutive year of famine. The UN estimates that at least two million people died.

Recounting Kim’s story—like anyone's story in North Korea—isn't easy. There are too many blank spots. Kim himself refuses to talk with journalists; he’s too afraid. Meduza has been able to reconstruct what happened to him thanks to Elena Burtina, who works for the refugee aid organization Civic Assistance Committee.

She has interacted with Kim over the span of a few years, and immediately cautioned us that he confuses dates, that he has been fuzzy in reporting nearly all of his life’s events to human rights defenders. He rarely remembers months, more often using years.

When Kim was still a small child, his parents died. He and his sister ended up in a foster family. As a teen, Kim was sent to live and study at a school. That educational institution was closed in 1996 when the administration found itself unable to feed the students.

For a while, Kim attempted to fend for himself, but it didn't work out very well. That’s how he ended up crossing the frozen river.

He set off for China. There were no guards, and nobody noticed that he’d crossed the border (the media outlet Vice has reported other ways of crossing the North Korean border).

In China, Kim was without any documents or money. Nevertheless, he was generally able to establish a life for himself.

For brief spells, Kim lived in nearly every one of China’s regions. At first, he moved around the regions along the North Korean border. Then he began to understand that it was better for security purposes to change his place of work and residence more frequently. He was unable to obtain refugee status in China (which never joined the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees).

Without the proper documents, Kim repeatedly encountered the same situation; he was hired for work, and then thrown out on the street without being paid. He tried to avoid encounters with other North Koreans, suspecting they could be agents who’d expose him. Within a few years, Kim learned Chinese and occasionally made money translating from Korean.

For nearly eight years, he moved from city to city, working either in the fields or in construction.

He lived day-to-day; if he made some money and wasn’t arrested, that was a good day. But that life was tiresome. Kim began to consider whether it was worthwhile to obtain Chinese citizenship, but he never once filed an application (fearing all officials and any state organizations).

In 2006, he resolved to leave for another country to get asylum.

He took a map and headed for the border. As it turned out, his map was outdated: it showed the old Soviet borders. It made little difference, though, as he was arrested by Chinese guards at the border with Kazakhstan. Almost immediately, he was transported to the North Korean border and turned over to guards there. Kim was then placed in a North Korean prison under horrific conditions. Dozens of people were packed into a small room. Lying down or sitting without permission was forbidden, and all who resisted were beaten.

Soon it got even worse. Kim was sent to work in a labor camp at a factory making concrete slabs.

Kim never appeared in the court that sentenced him. He never saw the ruling. Other prisoners told him that he would surely have to spend at least ten years in the camps—that was the punishment for “traitors” who fled to China and were deported back.

In the camp, the days blurred together, and Kim lost track of time. He had to work 20 hours many days, often completely without sleep. From the grueling work of hauling concrete slabs, many prisoners died on the job.

In “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea,” one of the main books documenting life there, journalist Barbara Demick explains that unauthorized border crossings land citizens in camps called kyo-hwa-so (“reeducation centers”). Their goal is “reforming citizens” who have strayed from the approved path. These are separate from camps for political prisoners (who are held in the so-called kwalliso). Kyo-hwa-so is considered to be a better fate; you might get set free from such camps, if you survive.

Demick writes of daily life in the camps: work runs from 7 a. m. to sundown; breaks are permitted only for eating, sleeping, and political education; and people sleep on a cement floor without bedding, fifty packed into a room. By the end of the workday, many are so tired that they’re incapable of conversation.

Kim spent about a year in such a camp.

Early one winter morning in 2008, Kim and thirty other prisoners were led to work outside of the camp. Only a single guard went along with them. The prisoners took advantage of the situation and fled in different directions.

Three of the prisoners, including Kim, hid in the home of acquaintances. They stayed there for two weeks. The other escapees, he said, were caught and shot.

After lying low, the fugitives parted ways. Kim again crossed the border, running over the same frozen river as a decade earlier.

His second stay in China lasted roughly five years. He planned a few times to appeal to the Russian Consulate, but—as before—he couldn’t make up his mind, fearing that all state organizations in China are linked to North Korea.

This time, however, he came up with a trick that helped him find more frequent work and—most importantly—get paid. Kim bought a forged Chinese passport. If policemen happened to check his papers, he’d hand them the document and run off. Then he’d buy himself a new passport.

In spring 2013, Kim decided to try for Russia, once more. He crossed on the ice over the Amur River to the Russian side, found a road, and almost immediately encountered Russian border guards. He told them he was trying to claim asylum. They arrested him and put him in jail.

In the Russian border city of Blagoveshchensk, Kim was charged with the criminal offense of illegally crossing the border, and fined 10,000 rubles ($125 today). According to human rights activist Elena Burtina, there was “the threat of his abduction by North Korean security services” during the court proceedings.

A refugee advocacy group found Kim a place to live in Russia, where he remained as he awaited a decision on his refugee status. In 2013, flooding in Russia's Far East damaged the building where he was living. Rights activists in Blagoveshchensk appealed to colleagues at the Moscow-based Civic Assistance Committee, who agreed to help.

Kim flew to Moscow, and brought to the organization’s office, where he stayed for a while. It was there that he worked periodically as a yard-keeper—not for pay, but just to pass the time.

At the end of 2013, he was joined by the Civic Assistance Committee in submitting his application for refugee status. But the scheduled meeting with the Federal Migration Service (FMS) never happened. Kim fled. He was spooked by the word “interview,” which was used to describe the mandatory conversation with FMS agents. (In North Korea and China, he had been repeatedly warned against ever granting interviews to journalists.)

Nobody was able to locate him for three weeks. Finally, he returned, and the human rights workers were finally able to convince him to submit the application.

In early 2014, the Moscow office of the Federal Migration Service rejected Kim’s asylum request. In November 2014, the Zamoskovoretsky District Court repealed that ruling as unfounded, but the application for refugee status had to be resubmitted. Kim received temporary papers—a “certificate of refugee status petition under review”—which allowed him to remain legally in the country. He went to work as a cook in one of downtown Moscow’s Korean restaurants and found himself a place to live.

But in November 2015, Kim's application was rejected again. And, January 26, Kim was further refused even temporary asylum. Officials at the Moscow branch of the Federal Migration Service explained that, in his application, Kim “was unable to prove convincingly that, he would face execution, should he return to his home country,” and that “humane reasons demanding the applicant be extended the opportunity for temporary residence on the territory of the Russian Federation are lacking.”

Kim is now appealing the decision, yet again, but another rejection means he'll be sent back to North Korea, where prison, and perhaps even execution, are likely waiting.

On the evening of January 28, the Federal Migration Service said it would review—for a fourth time—Kim’s asylum application.

Daniil Turovsky

Moscow