Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you. So the question is, who is going to answer this call from the North Korean refugees? As you've heard from Sungju, his story describes all of these challenges they endure throughout their lives, living in fear. It's a testament to the situation within North Korea that

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  No.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes. With HanVoice, we would act as the referrer of these refugees for consideration in the private sponsorship program. It doesn't require us to be a sponsorship agreement holder. For example, in what was done with the Project Tibet Society, a lot of those conditions are outline

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'm not personally aware of any. However, you can understand that a lot of the threats North Koreans feel when resettling in South Korea result from the proximity to North Korea and how North Korean agents might be able to more easily infiltrate in a country like South Korea, giv

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'm going to allow Sungju to speak to this in a second, but first I want to say that the South Korean government has a special program called “Hanawon”. Hanawon is usually a three-month program for North Koreans immediately when they get to South Korea after some processing and i

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, they have been arrested and there have been instances in the last few years. Mainly, some agents have gone after high-profile defectors. For example, Hwang Jang-yop, who was essentially the number two within North Korea, defected, and there were instances where agents were f

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Sorry?

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Absolutely.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The immediate reaction was that the borders really tightened. Prior to Kim Jong-un's taking over, there were about 2,000 to 2,500 defectors who arrived in South Korea every year. Following that, we heard of fences that had gone up along the border, increased patrols, motion detec

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We don't know of any instances in which South Korea has actively deported North Koreans back to North Korea.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Our proposal caps the number at 100 over five years. To put that into perspective, as part of its MOU, the Project Tibet Society has 1,000 over five years. We're looking at a tenth of the volume and we're looking at the support of the immediate Korean Canadian community, which is

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I think that's what we want to do actually. If you think about it, it would launch Canada into a leadership position in resettling North Korean refugees. We developed that number through consultations with the community. We looked at what, for example, was manageable for the chur

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Unfortunately, because of the schedule, we didn't have time to translate this memo we have about the entire program. It includes criteria that we discuss. We'll try to distribute this after the meeting at least to get it translated and distributed to the committee. You are correc

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It's true that much of the primary education is highly centred around political ideology. There are still many skilled North Koreans who go on to become doctors. There are some in the assembly. Many of them go on to have successful careers. If you look at someone like Sungju and

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There is a variety of supports that the Ministry of Unification as well as Hanawon provide. Some of this support is financial, everything from stipends to help them on a monthly basis to one-time payments that allow them to get housing depending on the size of their family. Other