premise: North Koreans who risk imprisonment and torture to flee the impoverished Stalinist state also face repatriation if caught by China and a hostile reception if they reach South Korea, rights activists said Thursday.
  Marcus Noland and Andrei Lankov, two of the co-authors of a new report, urged Beijing and Seoul to alleviate the plight of the refugees, estimated to number between tens to hundreds of thousands.
  "Everybody wants North Koreans to die quietly without making too much noise," said Lankov, a professor at Seoul's Kookmin University.
  With six-party talks on scrapping North Korea's nuclear programme set to resume Monday, Noland said it was understandable the nuclear issue received attention.
  But human rights issues would also have to be dealt with eventually if the North were to integrate with the world, and silence did not encourage better behavour by Pyongyang.
   What need to happen before the North Koreans integrate with the world?
hypothesis: human rights issues would also have to be dealt