Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Wed, 9 Sep 1992 10:44:59 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: Vietnamese in South Korea await new home

09/07

Vietnamese in South Korea await new home

    By Diane Stormont
    PUSAN, South Korea, Sept 8, Reuter - For 140 Vietnamese, the long, chilly
exile in South Korea's only camp for boat people may soon be ending.
    New Zealand's Immigration Office in Wellington said places in its 1992-93
intake quota had been tentatively earmarked for Vietnamese boat people here but
a procedural problem could upset the plan at the last hurdle.
    But now, oblivious of the diplomacy being waged on their behalf, the 145
camp inhabitants mooch around filling their day-to-day existence with English
studies, a bit of gardening and clipping magazine advertisements of the good
life.
    Diplomats expect the handful left behind by the New Zealand intake will be
resettled on a case-by-case basis.
    South Korea received only the fringes of the human tide that swept up on the
shores of Asian lands in the Vietnamese boat people exodus.
    Few made it this far north, both a blessing and a drawback for the
inhabitants of this makeshift centre set slap in the middle of Pusan's busy
container port.
    The deluge that swamped Hong Kong swelled the Vietnamese population there to
a peak of more than 64,000 last year, resulting in intense human misery.
    Only 1,230 boat people have passed through the converted depot since the
first rickety boat bobbed into coastal waters on September 15, 1977, said camp
director Chang Deok-woo.
    By the standards of many Asian refugee camps, life and conditions in the Red
Cross-funded centre are basic, but relatively congenial.
    A large daily schedule hanging in the director's office marks out the day.
    Wake up call at 7 a.m., breakfast at 8, lunch at 12.30 p.m., dinner at 6 and
lights out at 10.
    Inhabitants work hard at English tought by volunteers but show no
inclination to learn Korean. A language gap yawns.
    An early arrival who proved an exception to the rule and decided to settle
here acts as a volunteer translator.
    "I do not intend to stay in Korea," said Pham, a 25-year-old farmer from
outside Haiphong who arrived about two years ago. "I'll go anywhere that will
take me."
    South Korea has no plans to offer asylum, a Justice Ministry official said.
    New Zealand's resettlement plan hinges on the proviso that the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) determines the boat people are
eligible for priority resettlement, an Immigration Officer from Wellington said.
    Nothing has been heard from the UNHCR yet.
    The problem is some boat people have admitted they fled from China after
several years of resettlement there, and not directly from Vietnam.
    Hong Kong has a policy of promptly returning all Vietnamese arrivals from
China, a policy in line with UNHCR directives.
    Refugee and migrant pressure groups in New Zealand argue many Vietnamese
faced discrimination, perhaps even persecution, in China, and therefore should
be offered resettlement irrespective of technicalities.
    The last camp inhabitant to fly out of South Korea left about a year ago for
New Zealand, Pham said.
    No new faces have walked through the gates since August 16, 1989, although
18 babies have been born to camp dwellers, said Chang.
    The riots and violence that have erupted in Hong Kong, or the lawlessness of
the Thai border camps for Cambodians, have not occurred in Pusan.
    Small boys swung on the chainmail gate, wrestling and tumbling in the
sunshine under the watchful eyes of their mothers grouped around a hammock slung
in the shade.
    A knot of woman cultivated herbs and vegetables between the prefabricated
metal huts that served as bunkhouses, a Roman Catholic church, washhouses and a
spacious galley.
    Most families have their own room. Single men and women shared Korean-style
rooms that could be screened off with a sliding door from a central corridor.
    Several rooms contained tape recorders and radios. A few had television
sets. Books, toys and clothes lay in neat piles.
    Magazine advertisements for Mercedes cars and pin ups of film stars
plastered the walls in the women's corridor.
    Red Cross volunteers and inmates squatted side by side washing crisp lettuce
for a part-Vietnamese, part Korean lunch.
    Others sweated in the noonday sun constructing a new hut on a concrete base
that perhaps may never be needed.
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