Sam Brownback: “I certainly hope and pray the reports are true. I hope that the six to eight refugees being referred to in the articles…”

“I certainly hope and pray the reports are true. I hope that the six to eight refugees being referred to in the articles will soon have a chance to be welcomed by thousands of Americans who have worked hard for their freedom, especially those of Korean heritage in this country. I particularly recognize the Korean Church Coalition and a number of people who risked their own lives to form an underground railroad of sorts--reminiscent of what happened in my State and many other places across this country years ago--along the Korean-Chinese border. We have a fairly open border between Korea and China. You can get from North Korea into China, but you cannot get out of China. The Chinese have, to date, not been very cooperative in allowing North Korean refugees to pass. They have even captured North Korean refugees and sent them back to North Korea to an uncertain future and possible death, and in many cases, as well as a lot of persecution and mistreatment in a North Korean gulag, of which we have satellite photographs. I have held hearings on gulags containing, we believe, around 200,000 North Koreans. We also believe, over the last 15 years, approximately 10 percent of the North Korean population has died, primarily of starvation, although also from the gulags and at political prisoner camps. The people are walking out of North Korea. They are walking into China. We do not know how many, but the estimates have been as many as 100,000 to 300,000.…”