'Perfect storm' looms over Korean border (Famine refugees)

[TexasLawyer]

'Perfect storm' looms over Korean border

Wednesday November 1, 2006
By Clifford Coonan

BEIJING - As the international community struggles to cope with the political ramifications of a nuclear North Korea, a growing exodus of refugees into China is threatening a humanitarian crisis on the Korean peninsula.

It's a crisis that is taking place "almost invisibly" as the world's attention is focused on North Korea's nuclear test on October 9, which led to concerns about whether the secretive Stalinist enclave is stable or on the brink of collapse.

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The group said "the perfect storm" was brewing for famine in the North. This winter was expected to be a cold one and summer floods destroyed a portion of the country's harvest. This natural disaster combined with less aid due to the nuclear crisis and Pyongyang's refusal to allow charities to monitor distribution, could mean no food this winter, as it did in the mid-1990s when millions died of hunger. Thousands of North Koreans are risking their lives trying to escape their country's hardships in search of a better life.

The report said there were already about 100,000 North Korean asylum seekers hiding in China, many in northeastern China, facing anything from imprisonment to execution if they were deported by Chinese police. Pregnant women who conceive abroad suffer forced abortions.

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http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10408517