P-1 CABLE: NORTH KOREAN REQUESTS RESETTLEMENT IN

S E C R E T BEIJING 004090 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR PRM/A, EAP, EAP/K AND EAP/CM GENEVA FOR RMA BANGKOK FOR REFCOORD DHS/USCIS OFFICE OF REFUGEE AFFAIRS E.O. 12958: DECL: AFTER KOREAN REUNIFICATION TAGS: PREF PREL KN KS CH SUBJECT: P-1 CABLE: NORTH KOREAN REQUESTS RESETTLEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES Classified By: Political Section External Unit Chief Ted Lyng. Reasons 1.4 (b/d). ¶1. (S) The North Korean asylum seeker currently living in the U.S. New Embassy Compound (NEC) has requested resettlement in the United States. Post submits the North Korean's biographical and life history information below to facilitate CLASS and SAO processing as well as OPE and DHS interviews. ¶2. (SBU) Biographical information follows: Name KIM, Song Pok (Chinese: JIN Chengfu). Gender: Male Nationality: North Korea DOB: 24JAN1984 POB: Hamkyung Namto Province, Putongri Village Entered U.S. Embassy care: 19OCT2008 Relationship to Primary Applicant: Primary Applicant ¶3. (S) Circumstances surrounding request for asylum: Mr. Kim said that he left North Korea in 2001 to seek employment in China to help pay for medical expenses of his ailing father. He said his father died in 2004 and his mother subsequently remarried. Mr. Kim said he has no brothers or sisters. He said that he has distant relatives in northeast China, but they are "too poor" to assist him. Mr. Kim said he is unmarried and has no children. ¶4. (S) Mr. Kim stated that he first entered China in summer 2001, unaccompanied, by swimming across the Tumen River, which defines the border between North Korea and China. Mr. Kim said Chinese authorities arrested him and other North Koreans in Yanji city, Jilin province, in 2002 and deported them to North Korea, where they were held in a detention center in the town of On Seng Gun near the China-North Korea border. Mr. Kim said he was beaten while in detention in North Korea for not providing his home address to North Korean authorities, but he managed to escape 15 days after his incarceration. He then returned to China, where he did freelance work assisting in the operation of Korean-language computer games in Yanbian, an ethnic Korean autonomous prefecture in Jilin Province. ¶5. (S) Mr. Kim said that because he could not earn more than subsistence level income in Yanbian, because his life was becoming "meaningless" and "hopeless" and because he lived in constant fear of forced repatriation to North Korea, he came to Beijing on October 13 to seek resettlement in South Korea. Mr. Kim initially planned to enter the Embassy of Canada, an adjacent German-language school or the South Korean Embassy in Beijing, but the heavy presence of Chinese People's Armed Police (PAP) at those sites deterred him. Noting the lack of PAP guards at the NEC site, Mr. Kim on the evening of October 18 climbed over the outer perimeter wall of the NEC. Mr. Kim expressed fear that Chinese authorities would deport him to North Korea, where, if North Korean authorities were aware of his attempt to seek resettlement in a third country, he and his entire family would be killed. PICCUTA