South Korean authorities have not commented on Dong Guangping’s case.Courtesy of family
Dong Guangping, a Chinese human-rights activist who twice fled his home country only to be forcefully returned, has once again made a daring escape, traveling hundreds of kilometres by rubber boat to South Korea.
According to the Korean Coast Guard, a Chinese national was detained “attempting to illegally enter the country” in a 3.3-metre-long boat on Monday night, after being spotted by a fishing vessel off the coast of Taean, a county in northwest South Korea.
In a series of social media posts, Sheng Xue, a Canada-based writer and critic of the Chinese government, identified the man as Mr. Dong, 68, on whose behalf she has campaigned in the past.
“Dong Guangping is just too resilient, too brave,” Ms. Sheng wrote. “He had discussed with me before about escaping by boat, and I thought it was way too dangerous. But he actually went ahead and did it.”
Mr. Dong could not be reached for an interview. A lawyer acting on his behalf did not respond to a request for comment, nor did China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
According to Ms. Sheng, who said she spoke to Mr. Dong on the phone after he was detained by South Korean immigration authorities, the dissident set off from Weihai, in China’s Shandong Province, travelling some 350 kilometres across the Yellow Sea to Taean. The journey took him more than 30 hours and left Mr. Dong in a “coma”-like state from sleep deprivation and being “battered by sea winds.”
A former police officer from Henan, in northern China, Mr. Dong was dismissed from the force after he signed a petition supporting the victims of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre. In 2001, he was jailed for three years for “inciting subversion of state power,” and in 2014, was again detained for participating in activities commemorating the Tiananmen crackdown.
The next year, Mr. Dong and his family fled to Thailand, where they were recognized as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and accepted by Canada for resettlement. While Mr. Dong’s wife and daughter were able to fly to Canada, he was detained by the Thai authorities and deported to China, where he was once again jailed.
Six months after he was released, in January, 2020, Mr. Dong fled China a second time, for Vietnam, where he went into hiding for more than two-and-a-half years, as he sought to secure passage to Canada. Once again, however, the authorities detained and deported Mr. Dong, in violation of international protections for recognized refugees.
“The many years of imprisonment and persecution Dong Guangping has endured stem solely from his peaceful exercise of fundamental human rights and freedoms. For more than a decade, he has never ceased striving for liberty and reunion with his family,” Human Rights in China, an activist group, said in a statement. “That a man nearing seventy years old was driven to cross open seas in a small inflatable boat is itself a devastating indictment of China’s human rights situation.”
The activist group urged the South Korean government “to uphold humanitarian principles and international human rights obligations by ensuring that Dong Guangping is not returned to China,” and allow him to reunite with his family in Canada.
The Canadian embassy in Seoul referred a request for comment to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which did not immediately respond. In a statement to the New York Times, which first reported on Mr. Dong’s latest escape, IRCC said Canada “has a proud tradition of protecting refugees and supporting their resettlement with compassion, respect and dignity.”
Beyond the statement from the Coast Guard, South Korean authorities have not commented on Mr. Dong’s case, but Kwon Pyong, another Chinese national who fled across the Yellow Sea by jet ski, was allowed to travel to the United States in 2024 after 10 months in South Korean custody.