SEOUL, South Korea\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A Chinese political dissident is in South Korean custody after making a perilous escape from his country in a small rubber boat, officials and his friend said. It was his fourth known attempt to escape China, a risk he reportedly took hoping to be reunited with his family.<\/p>\n
Dong Guangping, 68, was aboard a 10.8-foot rubber boat in the waters off a western South Korean island on Monday night when he was detained by South Korea\u2019s coast guard for allegedly violating the country\u2019s immigration law.<\/p>\n
The coast guard sought a warrant to formally arrest him, but a local court on Thursday refused, saying it\u2019s \u201cdifficult to recognize sufficient grounds and necessity\u201d for his arrest. The coast guard said later Thursday it will hand him over to an immigration office but will continue to investigate him. <\/p>\n
Dong\u2019s prospects are unclear. Investigative authorities could pursue his arrest again or indict him without his physical detention. If Dong applies for refugee status, South Korea\u2019s Justice Ministry said it will review it. <\/p>\n
While Dong\u2019s possible submission of evidence of his political oppression in China could increase his chances for getting refugee status, observers still note that South Korea\u2019s acceptance rate for refugee status applications has been less than 2% in recent years.<\/p>\n
Dong, a former police officer in China, had previously been detained in China several times for his activism. He was imprisoned for three years in 2001 for \u201cinciting subversion of state power\u201d and spent more than eight months behind bars after being arrested in 2014 for participating in a memorial for victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to past statements from Amnesty International.<\/p>\n
It is his fourth known attempt to flee China. Appearing at the court hearing Thursday, he told reporters that he hopes to go to Canada via South Korea to reunite with his wife and daughters, who already resettled there, according to South Korean media. <\/p>\n
He previously escaped to Thailand and Vietnam, but authorities there deported him back to China. Dong also unsuccessfully tried to swim to a Taiwanese island. <\/p>\n
In a post Wednesday on X, Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian activist, praised Dong\u2019s braveness. She said Dong had discussed fleeing by boat with her, though she felt it was too dangerous. She said she talked again to Dong through Messenger, after he arrived in South Korea.<\/p>\n
\u201cDong Guangping said that when he reached Korean waters, he was already in a state of unconsciousness. He hadn\u2019t slept for over 50 hours and had been blown by sea winds for over 30 hours,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A local coast guard office handling Dong\u2019s case said he had no major health issues when he was detained. The office said Dong told investigators that he came from Weihai city in China\u2019s eastern Shandong province though he\u2019s refused to respond to most other questions. <\/p>\n
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, asked about Dong\u2019s case at a regular briefing Wednesday, answered that she was \u201cnot familiar with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Park Il told reporters Thursday that Dong\u2019s case would likely be handled in line with the local law, though he referred questions to immigration authorities at the Justice Ministry.<\/p>\n
Danielle Hickey, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, told the Associated Press in an emailed statement that the department could not comment on individual cases but that the country has a \u201cproud tradition of protecting refugees and supporting their resettlement with compassion, respect, and dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dong is not the first Chinese dissident to flee to South Korea by boat, though such an incident is highly unusual. In 2023, Kwon Pyong, another Chinese dissident, reached South Korea on a jet ski, saying he was trying to escape persecution in China for mocking its communist leadership. He was initially detained in South Korea but later reportedly moved to the U.S. to seek asylum.<\/p>\n
Kim writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Kanis Leung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL, South Korea\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A Chinese political dissident is in South Korean custody after making a perilous escape from his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4319,21339,6307,134,20425,8745,11865,21050,21338,171,21337,21334,21333,33,21335,21336],"class_list":["post-33659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-associated-press","tag-authority","tag-case","tag-china","tag-chinese-dissident","tag-coast-guard","tag-country","tag-dong-guangping","tag-immigration-law","tag-korean","tag-perilous-escape","tag-refugee-status","tag-rubber-boat","tag-south-korea","tag-south-korean-custody","tag-thursday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}