On August 16, KBS World highlighted South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho's remarks delivered at a seminar jointly organized by NKDB and ROK National Assembly member Choe Jaehyeong on the forced repatriation of North Korean escapees detained in China.

The article referenced figures from NKDB's Unified Human Rights Database, which has accumulated nearly 86,000 cases of North Korean human rights violations and over 55,000 individuals related to the aforementioned cases as of August 2023.

Unification minister Kim Yung-ho says North Korean defectors in China are "refugees" who must be allowed to enter South Korea.
Speaking at a seminar on Wednesday on opposition to China's repatriation of North Korean defectors, Kim said they should be recognized as refugees in need of protection of their lives and human rights, and forced repatriation runs counter to the spirit of international rules and also violates the principle of non-refoulement. 

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According to the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, a total of eight-thousand-148 cases of forcibly repatriated North Korean defectors have been reported and nearly 98 percent were carried out by China, which views them as illegal immigrants.

You can read the full article on Yonhap News Agency website by clicking HERE.