N. Koreans fled to S. Korea from Russian Far East in Sept.

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Dec. 23 Kyodo - Twelve North Korean men fled to South Korea from Russia's Amur Province in September, the first defections of a group of North Korean workers from the
Russian Far East to a third country, Russian security authority officials and other sources said Wednesday.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees helped the
North Koreans, who were in Amur as migrant workers, defect and is currently
dealing with applications of four other North Koreans who want to go to South
Korea.
The 12 include people who defected from North Korea as well as migrants who
entered Russia in the 1990s and 2000s and worked at a timber company in Amur.
They were overstaying in the province at the time of defection.
They sought asylum in South Korea via letters or phone calls to the UNHCR
Moscow office between 2007 and earlier this year, according to the sources.
Russian immigration authorities expressed concern that their country could turn
out to be a new route for defection by North Koreans. Previously, North Koreans
are known to have sought refugee at foreign diplomatic missions in China and
Southeast Asia.
Besides the 12 asylum seekers, in Vladivostok in the Russian Far East coast,
close to North Korea, one male North Korean worker filed a request for asylum
with the South Korean Consulate General and was granted asylum in the South
each year from 2006 to 2008, the sources said.
In 2004, one North Korean man fled to the South Korean Consulate General and
another to the U.S. Consulate General in Vladivostok and made it to the South.
Japanese consulates in Vladivostok and two other Russian Far East cities said
they have received no request for asylum by North Koreans.
According to the Russian government, around 1,700 North Korean workers live in
Amur alone as of this month. In other Far Eastern regions, Khabarovsk has
around 1,100 and the coastal region around 700.
They are engaged in felling of trees in Siberia and other strenuous labor.
North Korean workers in Russia, however, have been on the gradual decline as
Russia is sourcing more workers from Central Asia and former Soviet republics.
The Russian government in principal deports to the North North Koreans who fled
from the country by crossing the border or those workers overstaying their
visas. But an immigration official said it is impossible from a humanitarian
perspective to deport to the North even if they are overstaying their visas if
they sought political asylum by way of the United Nations, like the 12 who
successfully sought refuge in the South in September.
==Kyodo
2009-12-23 22:16:08