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Detainees have played a dramatic, but ultimately fruitless role in US-North Korean relations. North Korea has felt impelled to arrest a number of American citizens for breaking the law—such as it is; charges are typically vague—or for purely opportunistic reasons. The US then has to expend diplomatic resources to get them released. Our posts on the detainees are linked below.
Chinese motives for holding foreigners involved with North Korea are somewhat different, however, and center on emerging humanitarian and religious networks, including those working with refugees. The case of Canadians Kevin and Julia Garratt has again brought these issues to the fore. As we noted in a post in August, the detention of the two may have had multiple motives including a tit-for-tat over a PLA hacking case (the Su Bin affair, in which Canada was ultimately involved) and information the couple released on traffic moving across the Friendship Bridge. However the couple worked with an NGO called North Star Aid involved in supplying assistance to North Korea and the couple was known to be involved with organizations and individuals sheltering refugees as well.
The Christian couple, who ran a coffee shop in Dandong, were arrested last August and have been held separately in a detention center. Last week, Julia Garratt was released “pending trial by Liaoning Provincial State Security Bureau,” China’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday; she is barred from leaving China for a year or—more likely—until the issue is resolved. However, her husband has been moved into criminal detention “on suspicion of stealing and spying to obtain state secrets.” Neither was ever formally charged or arrested, and we have no sense of what crimes were committed or the evidence that will be brought to bear (Globe and Mail coverage here).
The case follows yet another that we had not covered: the arrest of Korean-American Peter Hahn in December. A retired social worker, Hahn lived in Tumen and was involved in a number of humanitarian projects including two bakeries inside North Korea and a factory in Rason making soybean paste. However, we suspect that Chinese concerns centered on his Tumen River Vocational School, which provided support to abandoned teenagers. Back to Jerusalem and other Christian sites have tracked both the growth of Christianity in China and the attempt of the Xi government to monitor it more closely and pinch off further growth.
In one important respect, Chinese and North Korean interests are in fact similar. For China, as for North Korea, the ultimate challenges are the domestic ones: concerns about the growth of independent centers of organization.
Previous Posts on the Detainees
- Detainees and Envoys (April 2013; on the possible North Korean motive of securing visits by high level envoys)
- Detained Americans: Not-So-Innocents Abroad (September 2013; brief outlines of the American detainees)
- Merrill Newman “Confesses” (November 2013)
- Why is Kenneth Bae Treated More Harshly than John Short (March 2014)
- Miller Matthew Todd (April 2014; how Miller’s name was initially reported by KCNA)
- State Department Travel Advisory Update (June 2014)
- Slave to the Blog: Abductions and Detainees Edition (June 2014; Fowle detention)
- Detainee Update and Canadians in Dandong (early August 2014 stories on the three Americans and the sweep against Christians along the Chinese side of the border)
- The Release of Jeffrey Fowle (October 2014)
- Bae and Miller Released, The Excellent Adventures of Matthew Todd Miller and James Clapper and The Hostage Rorschach Test (November 2014)
- Arturo Pierre Mendez
- Mike Chinoy on Merrill Newman
