‘She was the victim, not the criminal’: Federal officials blocked North Korea defector from entering Canada

Choi Minkyeong escaped five times from North Korea, was caught by Chinese authorities and deported back to the brutally repressive nation four times, and finally made it to freedom in South Korea 12 years ago.

Getting into Canada has proven to be another daunting challenge.

The defector was effectively prevented from entering this country Friday for a visit to raise awareness about North Korean human-rights abuses, after attending a United Nations forum in Geneva.

Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) had failed to grant her the required electronic travel authorization (eTA) she had applied for on Nov. 4, saying she first had to provide police records surrounding her forced repatriation from China to North Korea.

Choi, who runs a human-rights organization in the south, explained in a letter that obtaining such records would be impossible given North Korea’s totalitarian system and her “unique circumstances.”

As a Liberal MP’s office lobbied IRCC Thursday and Friday, the department said it would review her case, but she had to cancel her flight to Toronto from Paris on Friday, returning to Seoul instead. She finally received the permit on Monday.

“I understand that this ridiculous happening occurred due to the oversight and indiscretion of the frontline officials of the (IRCC),” Choi said in a letter to Immigration Minister Marc Miller. “But if I may say so, I felt terribly embarrassed and deeply, deeply disappointed  when I was denied boarding the scheduled airplane … I was regarded, in effect, as a person with a criminal record.”

Choi’s visit was to include a community event, a meeting with Toronto MP Ali Ehsassi and an interview with the National Post. Kyung Lee, who organized the trip as head of the Toronto-based Council for Human Rights in North Korea, said he was flabbergasted by her inability to obtain an eTA in time.

“She was the victim, not the criminal,” he said of the demand for records of her arrests. “This is a very important matter, a serious matter — how to treat (defectors) in Canada. If this news became known to Korean society …they would be very upset.”

Federal offices were closed Monday for Remembrance Day and IRCC could not be reached for comment, although it typically does not discuss individual cases for privacy reasons. Ehsassi’s office could also not be reached.

Choi’s story is, like that of many others who have escaped North Korea, a remarkable one. Beginning in the late 1990s, she repeatedly fled the country into neighbouring China, in one case marrying and having a baby, only to be eventually snatched by Chinese authorities and sent back, according to a profile this year by Taiwan’s Central News Agency. She was locked up in North Korean re-education camps and subjected to torture and other horrific conditions, the article said. At one point Choi was left for dead in a warehouse stacked with prisoners’ bodies, but managed to crawl back out. The fifth time she was able to make it to South Korea, and later founded the North Korean Incarcerated Victims Families Association.

She has visited countries such as Taiwan and the U.K. in the past to talk about her experiences and travelled to Geneva last week as part of the UN Human Rights Council’s “periodic review” of North Korea.

As a South Korean citizen, Choi does not need a visa, per se, to get into Canada but must obtain an eTA. For a $7 fee, those are usually confirmed by email “within minutes,” says the IRCC website, though can take “several days” in some cases.

The online form asks if the applicant has been arrested, charged or convicted of a criminal offence. It appears that at some point IRCC asked for documentation of her detention in China and North Korea. James Hwang, an assistant to MP Ehsassi, informed Lee on Thursday that  “I am told that she will need to provide a police certificate/court record, or a police report to finalize her eTA.”

With the help of an English-speaking assistant, Choi provided a one-page letter explaining why that would not be possible.

“Any legal proceedings or police records from my time in North Korea are completely inaccessible to me as a civilian,” said the letter. “(North Korea) operates under an authoritarian system where arrests, detentions and judicial proceedings frequently occur without due legal process.”

By mid-day Friday, as her flight from Paris to Toronto approached, the eTA was still not forthcoming. Hwang told Lee that after “multiple calls and emails,” he had managed to get her application cleared by the Canada Border Services Agency, but that IRCC was “reviewing the case” and working with the Canadian embassy in Paris.

Hwang said officials recommended that Choi visit the embassy to expedite the matter. She got on the plane to Seoul instead.

Ironically, the defector’s honesty may have sabotaged her chances of getting into Canada on schedule.

Lee said he has brought several North Korean defectors to Canada in the past, but if any of them were arrested during their escapes, he suspects they didn’t mention it.

Meanwhile, the activist said it’s crucial to continue to hear from such refugees so the cruelty of the North Korean regime is not forgotten.

Choi and others have also highlighted what appears to be a stepped-up effort by China to find and return defectors to North Korea. International human-rights law, however, bars countries from deporting people who would face torture, or other cruel or inhuman treatment.

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