A South Korean human rights group released a report stating that North Korea uses the basement of its embassy in Beijing as a secret detention center to interrogate and illegally repatriate North Koreans attempting to escape the regime. The report highlights this as a serious human rights violation and a breach of China's judicial sovereignty.
The Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), based in Seoul and focused on documenting human rights abuses in North Korea, published a report titled "North Korea’s Transnational Repression: China." Citing multiple sources, including a former North Korean diplomat, it states that North Korea operates a secret detention facility in the consular basement of its embassy in Chaoyang District, Beijing.
The report explains that this facility is used to track, pursue, arrest, detain, and interrogate North Koreans assigned to work in China and other countries who show signs of seeking asylum or defection to South Korea. They are then forcibly sent back to North Korea. Some are lured to Beijing, while others are directly apprehended and brought to the embassy.
This operation is overseen by an official called the "security representative," who formally holds a consular position but is actually an officer from North Korea’s State Intelligence Department, formerly the Ministry of State Security, temporarily assigned abroad.
When North Korean officials or workers sent overseas disappear, the security representative gathers information from intelligence supervisors within relevant agencies and reports to Pyongyang within 12 to 24 hours. Subsequently, the intelligence supervisors are ordered to arrest the individuals and detain them in the embassy's basement, according to the report.
TJWG states that detainees undergo intensive interrogation before being sent back to North Korea, mostly via direct Air Koryo flights between Beijing and Pyongyang.
The report also details the case of a North Korean hacker, identified only as "A," aged about 30. It claims he was arrested by Chinese police in Inner Mongolia while attempting to travel to Mongolia and then South Korea, interrogated for about six months, and then handed over to the North Korean embassy in Beijing.
According to the report, A was detained inside the embassy for about a year before being deported to North Korea in August 2023. He was disguised as a patient in a wheelchair, wearing a full-body cast, to prevent onlookers from recognizing him as a deportee.
TJWG notes that sources believe A died after being repatriated. A previous report mentioned that a source confirmed his death approximately three years after deportation.
TJWG emphasizes that North Korea’s cross-border repression of dissenters and defectors constitutes not only human rights violations and potential serious international crimes but also undermines China's sovereignty over its justice system and rule of law.
The report states that the level of cooperation from Chinese officials may vary and calls on the international community to closely monitor whether China is complicit in or neglectful of North Korea's activities. It also urges investigations and remedies for the forced repatriation of North Koreans.
, sourceYonhap/Seoul Economic Daily