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`Please save my cousin from being deported back to N.Korea`

`Please save my cousin from being deported back to N.Korea`

Posted February. 21, 2012 00:56,   

한국어

"My younger cousin loved meat. We grew up in the same neighborhood together. I was going to take her to (South) Korean barbecue places when she came back to (South) Korea. But that may never happen."

A former North Korean defector who came to South Korea five years ago had both heartening and heartbreaking moments last year. He heard that his cousin had left her hometown of North Hamkyong Province to arrive in Changchun, the capital of China`s Jilin County.

As soon as the former defector heard the news, he asked his friends in China to help arrange a meeting with his cousin. He remembered her as a young and charming girl who would tag along with him to school. He never got a hold of her, however. He hired a broker to find her but in vain. Fearing that something might have happened to her, he tried to calm himself down.

Five months later while passing a newsstand on the street, he found a newspaper that said North Korean defectors were caught by Chinese police and were on the brink of being deported. He then realized that his cousin was one of those arrested.

For the former defector, he felt as if his world was caving in. Since new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has come to the fore, the communist state has repetitively warned of the "extermination of three generations" of defectors. The former defector could not go to work for fear that his cousin would become another victim.

Then he heard of a campaign for preventing defectors from being sent back to the Stalinist country. The movement was started Thursday on an online site (www.change.org/petitions/save-north-korean-refugees-savemyfriend), with more than 20,000 people signing on in just three days. He said that if people show interest, the Chinese government will refrain from sending defectors back to the North.

The former defector has written many letters to his cousin in the hope that she will read them eventually. With swollen eyes, he said, "I never had a chance to say I love her. She wanted to be a teacher. If I meet her again, I will say I love her and that everything`s okay now. I desperately hope that people take interest in this issue."



hparks@donga.com