Japanese diplomatic offices in China have said they will stop protecting defectors following a Chinese demand, according to a Japanese media report today.
Yomiuri Shimbun reported the news, saying that the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang accepted a Chinese demand not to protect North Korean defectors upon the sending to Japan of five such defectors who had been under its protection for more than two years.
The report claims that in exchange for allowing the five to leave, China demanded a letter promising no repeats from the Japanese Consulate General. Japan did so, promising to respect Chinese requests in the future, and so the five defectors were able to fly to Japan.
Accordingly, the newspaper reached the assumption “that Japanese diplomatic offices are unlikely to protect defectors anymore, with the exception of special cases such as a defector having Japanese nationality or forcing their way into a Japanese diplomatic building.”
Since 2002, when five defectors tried to enter the building in Shenyang, an event thanks to which the defection issue became a focus of international attention, the Chinese guard surrounding the building has become much stricter, forcing Japanese diplomats to meet defectors elsewhere and take them to the building personally.
Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto revealed last year that over one hundred defectors have entered Japan via its diplomatic buildings abroad to date.
