Human rights groups urge Obama to pay heed to N.K. human rights

SEOUL, Feb. 10 (Yonhap) -- South Korean human rights groups on Tuesday urged U.S. President Barack Obama to actively seek human rights improvement in North Korea.

The Association of North Korean Human Rights Organizations, in a letter addressed
to Obama, also asked the U.S. to help stop China's repatriation of North Korean
refugees.
"We demand that the new U.S. administration maintain its anti-nuclear policy
against North Korea and seek improved human rights condition in the North," Kim
Sung-ho, co-chairman of the association, said at a press conference in front of
the U.S embassy in Seoul.
The association represents some 40 human rights groups and religious organizations.
Kim urged that all aid for the North except humanitarian assistance be linked to
improvement of human rights conditions in the communist state.
"We also ask President Obama to call on China to stop sending back North Korean
defectors and acknowledge them as refugees in accordance with the U.N. convention
on refugees."
Tens of thousands of North Korean defectors are believed to be hiding throughout
China, trying to resettle in South Korea or in other countries. They live in
constant danger of being deported back to the North where they face torture and
even execution.
Beijing argues the defectors are economic migrants rather than refugees and must
be sent back under a bilateral agreement with Pyongyang.
The U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees, to which China is a member, does
not allow a nation to repatriate refugees to their country against their will.
The association said it hopes U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, due to
visit Seoul next week, would meet North Korean defectors and hear from them the
human rights situation in the North.
More than 10,000 North Koreans have settled in the South since the end of the
Korean War in 1953 which ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.