A family travels 900 kilometres by boat to flee Pyongyang
Tokyo (asiaNews) – The odyssey of the four came to an end yesterday June 6th. They had travelled over 900 kilometres by boat to flee North Korea. A police helicopter lifted them to the immigration centre in Ibaraki province to begin the legal process which will allow them to reach their final destination: South Korea.
Their plight became public on June 2nd. On that day, at dawn the Japanese coast guard sighted the four off the port city of Fukaura North West Japan. They are a couple of 60 and their two children of 30, who had been drifting for over 5 days in the Japanese Sea on a haphazard boat of 7 meters. The eldest spoke a little Japanese and from their documents it was not difficult to identify them: it was a North Korean family who had attempted to escape the isolated nation on May 27th on a small boat.
They told their desired destination was South Korea but that due to the heavy police surveillance of its waters they had opted to head instead for the Japanese coast.
In recent years North Koreans have been fleeing their secluded nation in their thousands to escape hunger and political oppression, facing the risk of long journeys across China and south East Asia in their attempts to reach South Korea. If they are discovered in China they are immediately deported where forced labour or even execution awaits them.
Direct flight to Japan has not occurred since 1987. National Police, the government and diplomats took immediate action. The Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, notoriously harsh on North Korea, clarified: “I intend to deal with this case from the humanitarian point of view. Japan is a nation which protects freedom of Human rights”; June 3rd the Foreign Minister Taro Aso and his South Korean colleague who were meeting for bilateral talks on the island of Jeju (South Korea), promised that they would support the requests for political asylum of the fleeing family.
The police spokesman has revealed the details and motive behind this incredible, yet well prepared flight. Investigators in fact found a compass, sausage, drinking water and cloths to protect from bad weather, on the boat (see photo). The four, who had set sail from a small pot close to Chongjing city, north east Korea, travelled over 900 kilometres to reach the Japanese province of Aomori. The stormy weather of the first days forced them to remain gripped to the boat in order not to fall into the sea.
It had become so difficult that they were barely able to eat a little bread once every two days, they said. “I was unhappy with that incompetent leader – said one of their children – who is bringing our society to ruin. There is no freedom in North Korea”.
But this freedom also risked being denied in Democratic Japan. They were held in the police station for the same amount of time that they had taken to cross the sea, despite the fact that the Foreign Minister had publicly declared that the possibility they were spies was minimal. But doubts remained in the minds of the zealous investigators. One of the four was found in possession of amphetamines, even if the quantity was minimal, a contraband drug widely traded in Japan by North Korea, produced in Chongjin. The explanation was more than adequate: it helped avoid sleep during the dangerous crossing.
It was more difficult to establish the motive of poverty. According to Professor Toshio Miyashita, from the University of Yamanashi, an export on every day life in North Korea, a litre of diesel costs more than a month’s salary. And on the boat there was more than enough for the crossing as well as a spare engine. The doubt was easily explained: the flight had been well prepared over a lone period of time. The eldest son’s salary had been saved in order to by the boat and all that was necessary to make it sea worthy. Compatriots in the nearby Chinese province over the Tumen River supplied the rest.
The investigations have ended. The last stage of the flight to Pyongyang will be made in the comfort of an airplane.
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12/02/2016 15:14
