SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - A key figure in an underground campaign to help North Korean asylum-seekers escape to South Korea via China and elsewhere said Tuesday he has been freed from a Chinese prison after eight months and would soon be deported.
Chun Ki-won, a 46-year-old South Korean Christian missionary, said he had helped 170 North Koreans escape to South Korea since 1999, taking them through jungles of Southeast Asia and grasslands of China's Inner Mongolia, before Chinese border guards arrested him in December.
In a telephone interview from Hailar City in China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Chun told The Associated Press that a Chinese court released him Monday. It fined him $6,040 and ordered that he leave the country. He was waiting for his exit papers and hoped to return home later this month.
A call about Chun's case to the China's foreign ministry in Beijing was not immediately answered Tuesday evening.
The soft-spoken missionary said eight months in a grimy Chinese prison has hardly shaken his faith in his work.
"I found my mission when I first saw some of the North Korean women in China forcibly separated from their husbands and children and sold for money by human traffickers," Chun said. "I will continue to help these people wherever I am."
Chun is leader of the Seoul-based Doorihana, one of several missionary groups that run illegal relief operations in northeastern China, providing food, shelter and Christian or Buddhist teachings to North Koreans who flee their communist homeland and live in hiding in China.
Last December, Chun took 12 North Koreans he found wandering in China to the border with Mongolia. Using a map, the North Koreans were supposed to cover the last two miles into Mongolia, where religious activists were waiting to arrange their defection to South Korea.
A blizzard hit, forcing the refugees to lose their bearing and stumble into the hut of a shepherd, who reported them to Chinese border guards for a cash reward.
Several hours later, a taxi driver turned in Chun to the police several miles behind the border.
"I am most worried about those North Koreans I tried to help," the missionary said.
The group, reportedly detained in a prison in Inner Mongolia, includes four children and a woman who gave birth in prison.
Those North Koreans "are at risk of imminent forcible return to North Korea where they may face serious human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, torture or death in custody," said Amnesty International in a statement last week.
Thousands of North Koreans have fled famine and repression in their isolated homeland. Many are believed to be hiding in China, seeking a chance to come to South Korea. About 580 people have made it to the South this year.
Since March, 60 North Koreans have sought refuge in embassies and consulates in China, embarrassing the Beijing government.
China has allowed many to leave for the South, despite a treaty with North Korea that requires it to return fleeing North Koreans to their country. But it also has condemned South Korean "non-governmental groups" for taking what it calls "illegal North Korean migrants" to the South.
Many North Koreans in China live in fear of arrest and repatriation as Chinese authorities have renewed their crackdown in northeast China by rounding up North Koreans and sending them back to North Korea, Amnesty International says.