110TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. CON. RES. 234 
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 
Whereas the Government of North Korea is a dictatorial re-
gime that commits gross human rights violations against 
the North Korean people; 
Whereas the Government of North Korea attempts to exert 
absolute control over the lives of North Koreans through 
the use of deplorable systems of punishment and torture 
and by restricting the flow of information;
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Whereas the Government of North Korea engages in the sys-
tematic torture, unlawful detainment, and mass murder 
of tens of thousands of political prisoners, defectors, and 
refugees, employing the world’s most brutal concentration 
camp system; 
Whereas the lack of freedom, government persecution, and 
policies of selective starvation have driven hundreds of 
thousands of North Koreans to northeast China, fleeing 
for their lives from prison camps or political persecution; 
Whereas the Government of the People’s Republic of China 
forcibly repatriates North Korean refugees and imprisons 
foreign aid workers who try to assist North Korean refu-
gees inside China; 
Whereas to encourage these repatriation efforts, Chinese cen-
tral government authorities assign local public security 
bureaus in northeastern China a target number of North 
Koreans that they must detain in order to receive favor-
able work evaluations; 
Whereas the refugees returned to North Korea by the Gov-
ernment of the People’s Republic of China face imprison-
ment, brutal persecution, or execution; 
Whereas up to 90 percent of North Korean women refugees 
fall prey to traffickers in China who sell the refugees into 
sexual slavery; 
Whereas the United Nations Convention relating to the Sta-
tus of Refugees, done at Geneva on July 28, 1951 (189 
UNTS 150), as modified by the Protocol relating to the 
Status of Refugees, done at New York on January 31, 
1967 (606 UNTS 267), defines a refugee as a person 
who, ‘‘owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for 
reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
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particular social group or political opinion, is outside the 
country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such 
fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that 
country’’; 
Whereas the Government of the People’s Republic of China 
violates its obligations under the United Nations Conven-
tion relating to the Status of Refugees and the Protocol 
relating to the Status of Refugees by impeding access to 
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 
(UNHCR) and continually classifying North Korean refu-
gees as ‘‘economic migrants’’, denying them asylum and 
forcibly returning them to North Korea without the re-
view to which they are entitled; 
Whereas the UNHCR fails to robustly press the Government 
of the People’s Republic of China to grant the UNHCR 
access to North Korean refugees and has failed in initiate 
a binding arbitration proceeding against the Government 
of the People’s Republic of China pursuant to the terms 
of Article XIV of the Agreement on Upgrading of the 
UNHCR Mission in the People’s Republic of China to the 
UNHCR Branch Office in the People’s Republic of 
China, done at Geneva on December 1, 1995, governing 
refugee access and the refugee designation process; 
Whereas the UNHCR’s failure to bring such an arbitration 
proceeding was determined by the United States Con-
gress in the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 
(Public Law 108–333; 22 U.S.C. 7801 et seq.) to con-
stitute a ‘‘a significant abdication by the UNHCR of one 
of its core responsibilities’’; 
Whereas the failure of the People’s Republic of China to 
abide by its treaty obligations toward the United Nations 
is a critical means by which the Government of North