On June 13, 2023, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) held a hearing on the subject of “North Korean Refugees and the Imminent Danger of Forced Repatriation from China.”

You can find details about the hearing on the CECC’s website at this link, and watch the YouTube recording of the hearing at this link.

Ambassador Robert King (former U.S. Special Envoy for N. Korean Human Rights Issues) and Ambassador Jung-Hoon Lee (former ROK Ambassador-at-Large for N. Korean Human Rights), both members of HRNK’s Board of Directors, provided live testimony.

Suzanne Scholte, Co-Vice-Chair of HRNK’s Board of Directors, also submitted written testimony in her capacity as the Chair of the North Korea Freedom Coalition.

HRNK was invited to submit written testimony for this hearing, with an emphasis on the situation of officially dispatched North Korean workers in China.

Our full testimony is available on the CECC’s website at this link.

In our testimony, we compiled the latest available information from North Korean escapees and prominent activists in the North Korean human rights community. This information was gathered between June 2 and June 7, 2023.

One source noted in particular that “North Korea’s Ministry of State Security officers are likely to impose harsher punishments than before [on repatriated refugees] and extort [them] more severely, as no refugees have been repatriated in the past 2 to 3 years due to COVID.”

Based on our findings, we recommended that “both the U.S. government and U.S. civil society must urgently seek ways to reach out to the North Koreans trapped in China and educate them on the path to seeking asylum in the United States.”

Furthermore, “in order to provide the resources necessary for North Korean refugee protection and rescue, the North Korean Human Rights Act, which expired in September 2022, must be reauthorized.”