North Korea’s small Chinese community is being subject to a new round of persecution as Beijing and Pyongyang drift further apart. The Hong Kong-based Asia Weekly reported that over a hundred people have been arrested, sentenced to prison, or executed by the totalitarian state’s National Security Department.
Xu Fusen, the pseudonym of a merchant who travels between Dandong, northeast China, and North Korea’s Sinuiju region, told Asia Weekly about the arrests and sentencing, which mostly happened this summer.
To Xu’s knowledge, the “crimes” of which the at least one hundred Chinese were found guilty tended to include spying, illegal spreading of video materials in and out of North Korea, support for “defectors,” money carriers, or religious activity.
Other Chinese have been put under surveillance and other forms of restriction. Their family and friends in border regions of northeast China’s Liaoning and Jilin Provinces have reported losing contact.
Chinese in North Korea are not allowed the use of mobile phones on pain of immediate deportation, but typically such regulations are often circumvented or otherwise ignored. Asia Weekly reported that the North Korean authorities had begun to discourage ethnic Koreans from interacting with the Chinese, while urging them to keep them under watch.
