SEOUL: If you think the 25 North Koreans who defected to the South are bewildered in their new homeland, spare a thought for the South Korean government.

Adapting to life in the South will be a challenge for the refugees, but their difficulties may pale next to Seoul’s task of balancing human rights and delicate regional diplomacy.

The North Koreans’ dash to freedom, that began last week at the Spanish embassy and ended with a low-key welcome at Seoul’s international airport on Monday, brought far more than just 25 grateful new citizens to South Korea’s doorstep.

“The dramatic incident has again exposed a fundamental problem that should be solved at any cost, namely the violation of human rights of North Korean refugees,” said the Korea Times in one of many editorials demanding a fresh focus on rights.

The risks and costs of coping with — or ignoring — an invisible tide of an estimated 100,000 and 300,000 North Korean escapees in China is very much on the mind of every actor in the drama, even enigmatic North Korea, political analysts said.

For South Korean and Western activists, the suffering of North Koreans in their famine-stricken communist country justifies dicing with diplomacy on the Korean peninsula.

“The risks for the people in North Korea who are still living there and enduring torture and concentration camps or whatever are even higher,” said Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor who helped the 25 defect. “You have to take the risk.”

GOOD INTENTIONS VS RESULTS: The South Korean government has a different set of concerns.

Topping Seoul’s fears are that a defector exodus will spark a chaotic Albanian-style collapse of North Korea, bringing hungry refugees southward by the millions.

“We obviously want to take them for humanitarian reasons but because of the Sunshine Policy, we can’t overly or unnecessarily provoke North Korea,” said a senior South Korean official.

South Korea President Kim Dae-jung’s “Sunshine Policy” aims to achieve peace and reconciliation with North Korea through engagement, exchanges and aid for the North’s struggling economy. The policy favours gradual convergence rather than collapse.

The Sunshine Policy achieved a landmark North-South summit in June 2000, but has sputtered since last year under a virtual boycott of South Korea by North Korea, which has not changed or opened up as the rapprochement architects had hoped.

Seoul’s quiet approach is part of an uneasy “modus vivendi” with Beijing and Pyongyang in which the China-North Korea border stays porous enough for hungry North Koreans to get food but the crisis is played down to avoid antagonizing the communist states.

“If we don’t do that quietly some of the parties involved might take a harsh line which will make the North Korean refugee situation much more difficult,” the official said.

“We know this is not a permanent solution, it’s only a temporary solution,” he added.

NO PRECEDENT OR NO GUARANTEE?: North Korea has remained silent on this week’s defections.

Last June, the North waited four days before branding seven North Koreans who stormed into the Beijing office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Beijing “illegal border infiltrators” and blaming South Korea for enticing them.

This year, isolated North Korea may not break its silence on the latest blow to national prestige just weeks before it invites South Korean and foreign tourists to the Arirang Festival marking the 90th anniversary of the birth of late founder Kim Il-sung.

“I think North Korea will want to keep a low profile and not emphasize this issue with South Korea,” said Choi Choon-heum, senior researcher at Seoul’s government-run Korea Institute of National Unification.

South Korean eyes are on China, which was unhappy with the international media spotlight drawn by the mass defection.

“Such a way of dealing with the situation does not constitute a precedent for resolving similar situations in the future,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.

But refugee support groups have vowed more action.

“China wants South Korea to lie low and avoid another such incident,” Choi said.—Reuters