“In an instant, the capital was captured. Gunshots were heard everywhere and you could see flames. We must get out of this place as soon as possible. Although we are of the same ethnicity, we shot civilians and started a ruthless war because of our different beliefs. For the safety of me and my family. I will do everything I can for the sake of it. I will somehow get out of the horrors of war. I can do it across the sea. I have to leave this place.
This is not the story of the refugees in Afghanistan in 2021.
Refugees are true, but this is not the story of Afghanistan.
In 1950, 71 years ago, the story of our country during the Korean War.
Korea, a country inseparable from refugees.
There is a lot of noise all over the place about the possibility of Afghan refugees coming to our country.
So, the question Mabu News raises today is this.
"Afghan refugees, how should we view them?"
Refugee country, South Korea
Yes? You can do it. Why are we talking about our country on the refugee issue in Afghanistan, and why South Korea is an inseparable country from refugees? The Korean War broke out in 1950, and in the winter of that year, the UN formed the Korean Reconstruction Team for our country ravaged by the war. Named UNKRA (UN Korea Reconstruction Agency). Lee Unkra was responsible for rebuilding the Republic of Korea to a pre-war level and caring for the refugees and displaced people from the war. And this organization is now the birthplace of the UN Refugee Agency. Refugee organizations exist at the beginning of the Republic of Korea.
Korea, which has achieved rapid development, joined the Convention on the Status of Refugees in 1992 and has been accepting refugees in earnest in accordance with the Immigration Control Act since 1994. In 2012, the first refugee law in Asia was enacted. Korea, which had been receiving help from all over the world as a refugee, enacted a law for refugees before any other country in Asia. As the Refugee Act came into effect in 2013, the number of refugees visiting Korea began to increase. Compared to 1994, there were only 5 asylum applications at the time, but in 2018, the number increased more than 3,000 times to 16,173. From 2019 onwards, the scale is gradually decreasing.
Not everyone who applies as a refugee will be accepted as a refugee.
Only some of them will be recognized as refugees after undergoing rigorous screening.
2.8% of applicants are recognized as refugees in Korea.
If 100 people are screened, only 3 are recognized as refugees, but that number has been decreasing since 2018.
Let's look at the graphic above.
In 2014, when 1,574 people were screened, 94 (6%) were recognized as refugees, but this year, 5,370 people were screened and only 28 were recognized as refugees.
That percentage is 0.5%.
The global refugee recognition rate is between the late 20% and the early 30%, which is a huge gap.
What countries are the most refugees from who entered Korea through difficult screening?
As of 2020, China has so far accounted for the largest proportion of asylum seekers.
About 1 in 10 applicants are from China.
Next is Kazakhstan, which has a similar proportion to China.
In 2020 alone, Russia ranked first, and in 2019, it overtook China to take first place.
2019 is the first time that China, which has always been the number one refugee applicant, has lost its place.
This trend continued in 2020, but experts are analyzing it as the effect of an increase in the number of Russians entering Korea as Russia and Korea signed a visa exemption agreement in 2013.
Afghanistan, a country of refugees
Afghan refugees, who have gathered the world's attention, are not actually yesterday or today. It is the result of a war that has lasted for at least 20 years. Let's turn the clock back 20 years ago. On September 11, 2001, New York and the Pentagon, the heart of the United States, were simultaneously attacked by terrorists. The United States immediately declares a war on terror to oust al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, the masterminds of the terror. At the time, the Taliban were a supporter of Osama bin Laden. A US airstrike overthrew the Taliban regime and replaced it with a new Afghan government. However, the Taliban, not completely extinguished, continued to engage the U.S. forces to retake Afghanistan. That war has been going on for over 20 years.
The burden on the U.S. was not limited as the huge budget continued to go in like a drained poison, and casualties were incurred in the ensuing fighting. So did the Obama administration, and so did the Trump administration. In the end, the Biden administration drew a knife to withdraw all American troops by September 11 of this year. After the complete withdrawal of US troops on July 2nd, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in an instant. On August 15, Afghanistan eventually surrendered to the Taliban. When the United States and the government that had been protecting the Taliban disappeared, the great escape of the Afghan people began.
The escape of the people of Afghanistan has continued since then.
The number of Afghan refugees from 2001 to 2020 is around 2.65 million every year. In July of this year, Gyeongsangbuk-do had a population of 2.631,649, which means that the same number of people as Gyeongbuk-do residents leave their homeland every year to survive.
There will be 2.59 million Afghan refugees in 2020.
Pakistan accepted the largest number of 1.45 million people.
Iran accepted half that number, 780,000.
Pakistan and Iran have borders with Afghanistan, so you can see that the size of the reception has increased.
Third place is an unexpected country, Germany.
Germany hosts 180,000 Afghan refugees.
Afghan refugees entering South Korea
As the great escape of the Afghan people from the Taliban began, the US requested that the refugees be temporarily housed at USFK bases. The US Department of Defense is not only making a request to Korea, but is in contact with various countries with US military facilities, such as Japan, Germany, Kosovo, Bahrain, and Italy. Canada has promised to accept 20,000 Afghan refugees, and the UK has also announced plans to accept a total of 20,000 refugees. Right now, the number is about 5,000 this year, and it is said that it is targeting women and children, religious people and ethnic minorities who are oppressed by the Taliban.
The plan to host refugees at USFK bases ultimately failed. The U.S. withdrew its plans to accept refugees in Japan and Korea. Instead, South Korea announced that it would transfer 391 Afghan manpower to South Korea under the name of “special contributor”. It is a recognition of the merits of the personnel who helped the Korean army dispatched to Afghanistan, as well as the medical personnel, technicians, and interpreters who participated in the reconstruction mission in Afghanistan.
However, negative public opinion about refugees still persists. When the situation of the acceptance of U.S. forces in Korea was first reported, public opinion in Korea became noisy. A national petition was filed saying that refugees should not be accepted, and nearly 20,000 people supported the petition. The petition said, "The religion of Afghans can never live together with Koreans," he said, opposing refugees. With the concern that "the moment we receive refugees, we will begin to be exposed to terrorism." What do you think?
What if we were to be seen as "potential terrorists"?
It didn't really happen, so if you don't get a good feeling...
Let me tell you the reality.
Korea, the only divided country in the world, is still being treated similarly to Afghanistan.
Japan's countermeasures to a similar situation on the Korean Peninsula include a plan to selectively receive war refugees from the Republic of Korea.
The reason is that?
To prevent North Korean agents from entering Japan pretending to be refugees.
Also, think of the hate speech and violence that some anti-Koreans threw toward Zainichi Koreans.
They used the word "terrorist" with a perverted gaze on Zainichi Koreans as potential perpetrators of harm to Japan.
Considering the time when COVID-19 began to spread around the world, some countries were open to hateful expressions towards Asians and even violence.
How different are we who oppose Afghan refugees from those we condemned?
Can we oppose them?
Public opinion against accepting refugees is not unique to Korea. Immediately, Turkey and Greece announced that they would build a wall along the border to prevent the influx of Afghan refugees. Austria has also excluded Afghan refugees from accepting refugees, and to facilitate the deportation of refugees, it is said that they have planned to build a deportation center in the neighboring countries of Afghanistan. Switzerland has also said it will not accept refugees from Afghanistan.
Some developed countries are also using methods to reduce the influx of refugees by upgrading the refugee application system. It reduces the number of refugee applicants by making the application itself difficult and complicated in the first place. It creates a refugee screening system that is difficult to pass, and only the administrative procedures are mechanically followed. Experts point out that the humanitarian philosophy of accepting refugees has virtually disappeared. This point is unavoidable even in our country. The amendment to the Refugee Act announced by the Ministry of Justice last year included strengthening the refugee re-application process. NGOs at home and abroad, including the United Nations, are protesting that it is a violation that greatly restricts the rights of refugee applicants.
A whopping 67 countries, including Morocco, Haiti, Ecuador, Colombia, Ethiopia, and Luxembourg, raised their hands to support Korea in the Korean War.
The Korean War is the war in which the most countries in the history of mankind have volunteered to help just one country.
This record is also listed in the Guinness Book of Records.
A refugee relief organization called UNRWA was established in Palestine around the same time as Unkra, which was created for Korean reconstruction after the Korean War.
The purpose was to help Palestinian refugees and help with reconstruction, just like our country.
This organization is still active as of 2021.
In the meantime, we were invited to the G7 and put on the name tag of a developed country.
Without the help of the whole world, Korea would not have known.
I think that Korea, which has received more altruistic benefits than any other country in the world, is perhaps more exclusive to refugees than any other country in the world.
This is the question Mabu News has prepared for you today.
I'd like to know what you think about refugees.
(*This article is an edited article from the Witchcraft Newsletter)
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Written by
: Hye-Min Ahn
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