The night before last, while still in icy Beijing, I went to a nearby pub for dinner. I had a long day at the office and I wanted a quiet, familiar and non-crowded environment. I avoided the busy downstairs level and found an isolated table on the second floor.
I sat alone, scribbling down a few thoughts. My concentration was interrupted when a trio arrived and sat at the adjacent table. It was two attractive young Chinese women and a casually dressed Caucasian gentleman. They weren’t talking loudly, but as we were the only patrons on the top floor it was difficult not to eavesdrop. I tried... as a journalist I'm deeply concerned by other people's privacy. Moreover, their conversation wasn't really that interesting.
Eventually, he said something that prompted me to introduce myself. While talking about his visit to his wife's Chinese hometown, he said: “my wife’s mother was disappointed to find out that I only speak two languages: English and Newfinese.”
The girls took this as cue to ask him to speak in his “native tongue.” This is something that typically makes Newfoundlanders uncomfortable - generally because we’ve grown sick of mainlanders requesting that we “say something with an accent.”
I think he was a little relieved when a lifted my head and said: “St John’s.”
“Really?” he replied. “Gander.”
We made a bit of small talk - we both graduated from Memorial in the same year and had both spent most of the past decade overseas. He was working in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing.
I asked: “Say, what happened to all of those North Koreans who stormed the compound a few months back?” He said they had all been sent to South Korea through a third country... Singapore, he believed.
It was a low-key operation - concluded with the refugees landing in the South late last year. It wasn't widely reported at the time. None of the governments involved really wanted to attract attention to the matter.
Usually anything involving North Korean refugees is kept low key, but things were a little more sensitive than usual for several of the parties at that time. Beijing had made a rather unusual and undiplomatic request to have the refugees handed over to Chinese authorities (even though they weren’t Chinese and the embassy premises are legally on Canadian soil inviolable under international law (thanks cat').
South Korea, meanwhile, wanted to keep things quiet after being scolded by Pyongyang a couple of months earlier for having rather pubicly allowed entry to 460 defectors, reportedly the largest ever mass defection. Seoul didn’t want the grief that would come with another high-profile influx, it wouldn't be good for the appeasement 'sunshine policy.'
He said the refugees flight to Seoul via Singapore took about two months for the embassy to work out. He added that was “actually pretty fast compared to a lot of the other missions.”
I took that at face value. Being stuck for two months in a Canadian government building sounds like a form of hell to me, but I’m sure it was a lot better than being in North Korea.
I was rather harsh in my assessment of the abilities of Canadian consular staff when I had initially heard of the North Korean refugee incident, writing the following:
It is nearly universally accepted among long-term
Canadian expats and travelers that Canada has some of the worst
consular services available from a Western country. They are typically
unable to deal efficiently and politely with requests from the
country’s own citizens and they are generally bad at processing
refugees.
The Koreans would have been better off storming the
UK or US embassies. Though I’m sure the lax security of the Canadian
facility made it an easier option.
I still maintain that most Canadian embassies and consulates offer services that are sub-par compared to what is offered by the US and UK (although, post-9/11, immigration and refugee procedures have become overly tight at the former). However the Canadian diplomatic corps performed admirably in this case, and well above my expectations.
I belatedly apologize for the rash judgment I made in my initial post
(link via Marmot as I can't access my old site from here).
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