China has never repatriated any politically-motivated North Korean defectors, and has helped them migrate to other countries, including South Korea and the U.S., a Korean politics professor said quoting a Chinese government official.

His comment comes as international pressure is growing on China to not repatriate North Korean defectors who might face severe punishment under the Kim Jong-un regime.

China has repeated it does not recognize North Korean defectors as refugees but “illegal trespassers” for economic reasons.

Moon Chung-in, politics professor at Yonsei University, said that recently in a forum, he had an intensive debate on the controversial issue with a Chinese government official and heard an “interesting” story.

“The Chinese government has been sending those politically-motivated refugees and defectors from North Korea to South Korea and the U.S., as well, because they knew that they would be subject to the death penalty and other kinds of harsh punishment,” Moon said.

North Korea’s politically-motivated defectors including the late Hwang Jang-yup, the highest-ranking communist official to have defected from North Korea, have never been repatriated by China, he added.

“But as to economic defectors, they cannot figure out what kind of penalties they will get when they’re returned to North Korea,” he said, stressing that he is not speaking for China.

Moon also said that the Chinese government has been exerting pressure on North Korea to refrain from harshly punishing North Koreans who are returned to North Korea.

Cui Shunjin, an associate professor of international relations at Zhejiang University, noted that the Chinese government faced a dilemma: It can neither encourage more North Korean defectors to flee their country by protecting them, nor remain criticized by the international community over humanitarian issues as one of the leading world powers. Thus, the Chinese authorities try to avoid the issue entirely, she said.

China used to mainly provide economic aid to North Korea, but recently become more interested in economic investment so that North Korea can become less of a burden on China, she noted.

Meanwhile, the North’s foreign ministry on Tuesday denounced the South’s drive to internationalize the issue of North Korean defectors’ human rights.

In a question and answer session with a reporter of the North’s state-run Korea Central News, the ministry spokesman said that the Lee Myung-bak administration’s raising the issue on the international stage prevents neighboring countries from building dialogues and cooperation and that it will lead to a vicious circle of conflicts and confrontations.

By Kim Yoon-mi (yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)