SEOUL — In mid-February, as Libya shook to the incipient revolt against Muammar al-Qaddafi, around 200 North Korean migrant workers found themselves stranded. Like their compatriots in other parts of the Middle East, they had been brought in to work as cut-price doctors, nurses, and construction workers. But with a popular uprising unfolding, their government now refused to repatriate them.
COMMENTS (1)
More...
According to reports, Pyongyang ordered the workers to remain in Libya out of fear that what they witnessed -- a full-blown popular rebellion against Qaddafi's dictatorship -- could lead to a copycat rebellion back home. "The fear was obviously that these 200 would have a kind of a viral effect, bringing news and information about what was happening in Libya," said Tim Peters, founder of Helping Hands Korea, which aids North Korean refugees.
Mass popular uprisings, so often a contagious affliction, pose problems for any dictatorship. For North Korea, the outbreak of revolts in Egypt and Libya -- two steadfast allies of the hermit regime -- has prompted swift moves to head off a similar outbreak of democracy on its own turf.
The first line of defense, as always, has been information. Although the NATO strikes against Qaddafi's regime brought a string of shrill denunciations in the state-run media, the regime has been all but silent about the Arab uprisings. At the same time, it has moved to tighten border controls in order to prevent "unofficial" news from getting in.
Peters said that both Beijing and Pyongyang were very nervous about the "potential virus effect" of the political awakening in the Middle East. Since the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the porous Chinese-Korean border, which has acted for years as an escape route for defectors and smugglers, has been rigged with cameras and heat and motion sensors in a bid to stem illegal crossings. The crackdown, he said, has only intensified since the outbreak of the Arab revolts. "The knee-jerk reaction in both places is more control, restrictions -- essentially, lockdown," Peters said. Marcus Noland of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said that this year, restrictions have even been extended to those who have legitimate permission to travel to China for trade purposes.
In recent months, North Korea has also launched a crackdown on the possession of Chinese cell phones -- a key source of outside news and information. North Korea's own mobile-phone service, provided by Egypt's Orascom Telecom, with about 500,000 subscribers, is blocked to international calls and subject to close surveillance. Jiro Ishimaru, chief editor and publisher of Rimjin-Gang, a Japan-based publication that smuggles video reports out of North Korea, told me that "more than 10,000 people" in border regions were suspected of using Chinese phones, which can call internationally and are a key link to outside media reporting on North Korea.
SUBJECTS:
(1)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE