| Summary/Abstract |
Escalating tensions in the Peninsula may force voluminous North Koreans to leave the country, although relevant information is limited. China has refused to grant North Korean escapees the refugee status, because the main reason of their departure, economic hardship, is not prescribed in conventional refugee definition. The Bangkok Principles provide principal guidance to Asia’s refugee issues, whereto its non-legally binding framework helps facilitate the fledgling regional efforts and still-developing states’ wills. Yet, China’s insistence in distinguishing economic hardship from political causes reifies its overt cautions to the rapidly evolving refugee causes, and an outright rejection to the indiscriminate humanitarian nature of refugee protection. Another reason is China’s ‘Asian Values’ approach to human right, seeing various aspects of human right as separable. To grant refugees only partial rights would appear theoretically unsound, and blatantly contradicting its integral human-right essence. Realistically, China has only limited refugee reception experiences. Its relevant domestic mechanism is under-developed, whereby positive public opinions cannot be effectively remoulded. China also worries about the unwanted international attentions and entailed geopolitical implications, which imply denunciation of Pyongyang’s governance performance by formally identifying these escapees, refugees. Current dramatic changes in inter-Korean relations urge China to take swift, expedient, and substantive actions.
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