Journal of Refugee Studies Vol. 35, No. 1 VC The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press.

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doi:10.1093/jrs/feab045 Advance Access Publication 14 April 2021

Cold War Refugees: South Korea’s Entry into

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the International Refugee Regime, 1950–1992

NORA HUI-JUNG KIM *

Department of Sociology, University of Mary Washington, Fredericskburg, VA
22401, USA
[email protected]

MS received April 2020; revised MS received March 2021

When and how does a state become a part of the international refugee regime, and
how does a state’s role within the regime change over time? Using South Korea as a
case study, this article highlights the significance of Cold War politics as a main cause
of the expansion of the international refugee regime. South Korea was first entered
into the international refugee regime during the US-led Korean War. And it was due
to the neocolonial relationship between South Korea and the US that South Korea
participated in the Vietnam War, and consequently, South Korea received its first
internationally recognized refugees. Pressure from the US largely explains the bur-
den-sharing role that South Korea played during the Indochinese refugee crisis.
However, repositioning itself as a subempire in Asia and seeking enhanced inter-
national stature, South Korea signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, finally
becoming an official member of the international refugee regime.

Keywords: Korean war, Vietnam war, international refugee regime, critical refugee
studies, militarized refuge(es), South Korea

Introduction
The hottest news in the spring and summer of 2018 in South Korea was the ‘crisis’
of Yemeni asylum seekers in Jeju Island. Small numbers of Yemeni asylum seekers
started to arrive in late 2017, but on 23 April 2018, 561 Yemenis arrived at the Jeju
International Airport and applied for asylum. The media coverage of this ‘unpre-
cedented’ number of Yemeni asylum seekers was sensational, as indicated by
headlines such as ‘South Korea in Shock, Unexpected Anti-Refugee
Sentiments,’ (Hankookilbo 2018) and ‘[the government should] Provide an
Answer to 700,000 People who Signed the Petition for More Restrictive Asylum
Policies’ (Yeonhap News 2018). The media narrative commonly mentioned how
this was the first time ever that South Korea had faced a massive number of
asylum seekers. Commentators and some legislators found faults in the 2013
Refugee Act, the act initially touted as the first standalone refugee act passed in
Asia. They argued that the flood of asylum seekers would not cease unless the
436 Nora Hui-Jung Kim
Refugee Act was drastically amended or entirely abolished. Some even argued
that South Korea should withdraw from the 1951 Convention and the 1967
Protocol, to which South Korea became a signatory in December 1992. With

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the Yemeni asylum seeker ‘crisis’, South Koreans were suddenly reminded that
South Korea had become a part of the international refugee regime, but when and
how did it happen?
Using South Korea as a case study, this article asks when and how a state
becomes a part of the international refugee regime and how a state’s role within
the international refugee regime may change over time. It does so by considering
Cold War politics and the US-South Korea relations as a neocolonial one. This
article has three broad objectives. First, it provides a corrective view to the preva-
lent narrative of the 2018 Yemeni asylum seekers. Contrary to a popular belief, the
Yemeni asylum seekers are not the first, or even the largest, group of asylum
seekers to reach South Korea. From 1975 to 1992, close to 3000 internationally
recognized refugees stayed in South Korea—some stayed for a few weeks, while
others stayed for a few years. These were refugees from Vietnam, often known as
the ‘boat people’, and they formed South Korea’s first encounter with internation-
ally recognized refugees. South Korea’s entry into the international refugee regime
predates its encounters with Vietnamese refugees, however. The second objective
of this article is to show how war can be a main cause of a state being incorporated
into the international refugee regime. It was through the Korean War that South
Korea was introduced to the Western world as a country of war orphans and
refugees. To the UN and US, Koreans escaping to south in search of safety were
bona fide war refugees. However, it was the Vietnam War that led South Korea to
become fully integrated into the international refugee regime. Aftermath of the
Vietnam War, South Korea received ‘refugees’ and was introduced to the 1951
Convention and the 1967 Protocol, backbones of the international refugee regime.
That South Korean bureaucrats initially translated the label ‘refugees’ to the
Korean War term ‘displaced people’ (pinanmin), demonstrates the centrality of
wars to South Korea’s incorporation into the international refugee regime. The
third objective is to trace and explain South Korea’s changing position in the
international refugee regime during the Indochinese refugee crisis from 1975 to
1992. South Korea’s entry into, and its changing role within, the international
refugee regime during this period had been conditioned by its relationship with the
US, a hegemonic actor in the international refugee regime. Repositioning itself as
a subempire in Asia and seeking enhanced international stature, however, South
Korea signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention in 1992 and enacted the Refugee
Act of 2013, finally becoming an official member of the international refugee
regime.

The Cold War, the US Hegemony and the Expansion of the International
Refugee Regime
The modern international refugee regime began with the creation of the High
Commissioner for Refugees in 1921, and it was shaped into its current form in
 Cold War Refugees 437
the aftermath of WWII with the UN Convention and the Protocol being signed in
1951 and 1967, respectively (Loescher 2001; Barnett 2002). From its inception, the
international refugee regime was fundamentally Eurocentric (see, e.g. Hyndman

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1993; Chimni 1998; Davies 2006; Janmyr 2017; Peterson 2012, 2015). In the 1951
Convention, refugees were defined exclusively as World War refugees or refugees
fleeing to the West from the Eastern Iron Curtain (Einarsen 2011: 56). As such, the
‘international’ refugee regime was initially a regime of and for the West alone.
Peterson (2015) attributes the Eurocentric bias in the international refugee regime
to the binary categories of civilized vs uncivilized states underlying international
laws, including refugee laws. International laws were built in a way that only
civilized states were qualified to join the family of nation states and to enjoy the
privilege afforded to sovereign countries (Peterson 2012, 2015). European colonial
powers considered refugee-producing events outside of their immediate context
‘as instances of mutiny, rebellion, hiding, absconding, banishment, deportation,
unauthorized flight and various forms of illicit residence and unauthorized move-
ment’ (Peterson 2015: 456).
While the protocol that relaxed the geographic limitation in the definition of
refugee was not signed until 1967, the recognition of some non-European ‘refu-
gees’ began in the early 1950’s in a humanitarian sense, if not a legal sense. The
transposition of the international refugee regime from Europe onto post-Colonial
Asia occurred in the context of the Cold War and the expansion of US military
hegemony in Asia. Through the logic of the Cold War, where communist states
produced refugees and Western states provided refuges, it eventually became pos-
sible that people fleeing non-Western states, even ‘uncivilized’ ones, were recog-
nized as ‘refugees,’ or using the US’s preferred term, ‘escapees.’ The US, the
hegemonic power during the Cold War, emerged as a major player, replacing
the former colonial powers of Britain and France, as a major financial contributor
to the international refugee regime.
However, the Cold War politics and US’s interest is only half of the (hi)story of
the expansion of the international refugee regime, and it ignores the neocolonial
military expansion of the US as the cause of human displacement in Asia. Also,
missing from the narrative of Cold War politics are questions about how ‘the gift
of freedom’ from and ‘debt’ to the imperial US (Ngueyn 2012), in the forms of
military intervention and refugee rescue, has played a role in the expansion of the
international refugee regime itself. Using the concept of ‘militarized refuge(s)’,
critical refugee scholar Espiritu (2006, 2014) draws our attention to how wars
have not only been a significant factor in producing refugees, but also in determin-
ing who would be given asylum in which countries. Beginning with the Spanish-
American War (1898) and the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), the US
extended its colonial military power into the Asia-Pacific, including Hawaii,
Guam, and the Philippines; and these colonized areas were used as surrogate
refuges after the fall of Saigon. In this sense, ‘refuge and refugees are co-consti-
tutive, and both are the (by) product of US militarism’ (Espiritu 2014: 2). By
‘rescuing’ Vietnamese aftermath of the war, the US was able to recast the narrative
of the ‘US war fought in Vietnam’ from a defeat to a victory, maintaining its
438 Nora Hui-Jung Kim
hegemony in Asia. From this perspective, the bodies of refugees take on important
contemporaneous functions: embodying the racialized and gendered violence of a
war, and recasting military violence into benevolent humanitarianism (Espiritu

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2014: 18; see, also, Sahara 2012).
The concept of militarized refuge(e) is relevant in the context of South Korea
becoming part of the international refugee regime. Indeed, two hot wars within the
Cold War, i.e. the Korean War (1950–53) and the Vietnam War (1964–73), forced
South Korea to grapple with its refugee policies. In the following, building upon
insight of critical refugee studies (Ngueyn 2012; Espiritu 2014), I focus on the
Korean War (1950–53) period, where war refugees, were sometimes used as a
means to justify the war itself, but at other times seen as a potential threat or
hinderance to military operations. Then, I delve into the Vietnam War and its
aftermath when South Korea became more fully incorporated into the inter-
national refugee regime. I highlight how the ‘debt’ owed to the US during the
Korean War was used to justify South Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War
and the resulting Indochinese refugee ‘crisis’. Finally, I briefly comment on South
Korea’s 1992 signing of the 1951 Convention and its introduction of a Refugee
Act in 2013, in terms of South Korea’s repositioning as a subempire in Asia.

Korean War Pinanmin and South Korea’s Introduction to the International

Refugee Regime
The Korean War was a precursor to the Vietnam War in several aspects: it was the
first civil war in the Third World in which the US participated, and the war was a
result of the US’s anti-communism containment policy (D. Kim 2004). The Korea
War had tremendous human costs, with several million deaths and an even larger
number of wounded (D. Kim 2004: 524). It also created hundreds of thousands of
pinanmin, people who abandoned their homes and retreated to southern parts of
the Korean peninsula. The massive movement of these de facto war refugees be-
came a problem for the UN forces, as their movement clogged the roads and
increased the chances of infiltration by North Korean spies (Conway-Lanz
2005; Sacquety 2011). It was against this background that the US and UN forces
rolled out refugee relief missions. Initially taking primary responsibility for refu-
gee issues was the 8201st US Army, which assumed four different names between
1950 and 1955: the UN Public Health and Welfare Detachment, the United
Nations Civil Assistance Command (UNCAC), the United Nations Civil
Assistance Command, Korea (UNCACK), and the Korean Civil Assistance
Command (KCAC) (Sacquety 2011: 64). In addition, assuming that the Korean
War would be over soon and that economic prosperity would be an essential anti-
communist measure (Lyons 1958), the US pressured the UN to establish the
United Nations Korean Reconstruction Agency (UNKRA), an agency for
post-war reconstruction of Korea. However, as the war continued, UNKRA
mainly focused on war refugee assistance, while the International Refugee
Organization (IRO) focused its effort in Europe (Zolberg 1988). Despite carrying
UN labels, both the war and refugee relief operations during the Korean War were
 Cold War Refugees 439
led by the US, as indicated by the fact that out of the 2 billion US dollars chan-
neled to Korea from 1950 to 1957, the US contributed 1.8 billion (Lyons 1958).
Because of the US’s strategic interest in the Korean peninsula, Korean War

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refugees garnered more attention and resources than any other displaced people
in Asia (Loescher 2001), if not from IRO. As such, Korea was introduced to the
international refugee regime as a recipient of ‘gift of freedom’ from the US.
In the US and UN handling of pinanmin, Korean war refugees were considered
primarily as potential disease carriers or embedded enemy combatants.
Inoculation was one of the main focuses of refugee management during the
war, as controlling the epidemics among refugees was considered to be a key to
‘lessen the hazard of the spread of the disease to our own troops and those of our
United Nation allies’ (Brigadier General Crawford F. Sams, Chief of Health and
Welfare of the UN Public Health and Welfare Detachment in Korea, cited in
Sacquety 2011: 65). Movements of refugees were strictly controlled to keep them
away from the combat areas and transportation routes. Refugees were allowed to
move only via established escape routes and, once they arrived at a point of entry,
they were background-checked, issued a refugee card, and sprayed with DDT at a
processing station (Kang 2009: 112). There was a blanket order for US soldiers to
use lethal force against Korean refugees to control their movement (Conway-Lanz
2005). This order often resulted in mass killings of refugees. One such incident was
the No Gun Ri incident, often referred to as ‘Korea’s “My Lai”’ (C. Hong 2015).
Since the revelation of the No Gun Ri massacre by the Associated Press in 1999, at
least sixty additional mass killings conducted by US troops have been documented
(D. Kim 2004: 523).
Unlike the Vietnam War, the Korean War did not end with a massive evacu-
ation or exodus of refugees outside of the Korean peninsula. This is, in part,
because the war did not end, and thus, the US did not lose the war, and South
Korea remains a capitalist country that is friendly to and dependent upon the US.
Nonetheless, the war caused significant transborder movement of Koreans, even if
they were not officially recognized as ‘refugees.’ Ji-Yeon Yuh (2005) argues that
most Korean migration that has occurred since 1950 has been ‘refuge migration,’
as it was either flight from the war or from its consequence. War orphans and
transnational adoptees comprise a significant portion of the post-war ‘refuge
migrants’ (Yuh 2005; Oh 2012; C. Hong 2015; J. Kim 2015; ). The Refugee
Relief Act of 1953, while intended for European refugees escaping communism,
served as a backdoor for Korean children and later helped establish an adoption
industry between South Korea and the US (Oh 2015: 148). Similar to the images of
‘good’ Vietnamese refugees (Espiritu 2014), the figures of Korean ‘war orphans’
were central in re-narrating the US military imperial project in the Korean pen-
insula as a humanitarian rescue (C. Hong 2015; J. Kim 2015).
Mini Thi Nguyen aptly notes how Vietnamese war refugees are subject to the
‘gift of freedom’ twice, once as objects of military intervention in the Cold War
and a second time as objects of deliverance in the aftermath of the war (Ngueyn
2012: 23). Korean war pinanmin are subject to ‘gift of freedom’ three times: first as
the objects of military intervention to end Japanese colonial rule, second, as
440 Nora Hui-Jung Kim
objects of the intervention against communist aggression, and third as objects of
rescue during and after the war. However, this ‘gift of freedom’ narrative silences
the instrumental role that the US played in the division of Korea in 1945, the

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subsequent US military occupation of the South Korea from 1945 to 1948 (C.
Hong 2015; J. Kim 2015; M. Kim 2015), and the fact that the Korean war was an
extension of conflicts originated from the US occupation of Korea (M. Kim 2015:
696). Also effaced from the public memory are the atrocities committed by US and
UN soldiers. Instead, US and its soldiers were portrayed as benevolent guardians.
As a local newspaper puts it, ‘the meaning of the three English letters “CAC” are
well known—and long will be remembered with gratitude’ (cited in Sacquety 2011:
75). This narrative of ‘gift of freedom’ from and corresponding ‘debt’ to US played
a significant role in South Korea’s decision to dispatch troops to Vietnam and its
fuller incorporation to the international refugee regime.

Vietnam War Refugees and South Korea’s Full Incorporation into the
International Refugee Regime
Encountering Refugees, 1975
South Korea’s encounter with, and entry into, the international refugee regime
starts with South Korea’s decision to dispatch its troops to Vietnam. In response
to the Johnson administration’s ‘more flags’ campaign (Han 2006; Hong 2009;
Lee 2009), South Korea dispatched a total of 320 000 Korean soldiers, the second
largest force, behind only the US. South Korea’s decision to join the Vietnam War
reflects the neocolonial relationship between South Korea and the US. In the mid-
1950s, Washington was planning to minimize its military and economic contribu-
tion to South Korea. For then president Park Chung-hee (r. 1962–1979), such a
reduction in US troops and decline in US policy importance could lead to a
legitimacy crisis for his regime (Hong 2009). Knowing Park’s fear of a US troop
reduction in South Korea, Winthrop G. Brown, then US ambassador to South
Korea, ‘implicitly pressured [the Park administration] by alluding that the US
would take troops out of Korea to send them to Vietnam’ (Institute of Military
History 1996: 175). Sending South Korean troops to Vietnam was also justified as
a way to pay back South Korea’s debt to the US. Park Chung-hee reminded South
Korean soldiers ‘they were the crusaders of freedom similar to our comrades of the
free world who helped us during the Korean War’ (Speech delivered at South
Korean troop sendoff ceremony on February 9, 1965, Source: Presidential
Archive).
South Korea’s encounters with refugees were a direct consequence of its par-
ticipation in the Vietnam War. South Korea encountered Vietnamese refugees in
two waves: the 1975 evacuees and the ‘boat people’ arriving in 1977 and onward.
The 1975 refugees consisted of two groups, the Landing Ship Tank (LST) evacuees
and Twin Dragon rescuees. After the fall of Saigon, the South Korean govern-
ment dispatched two LSTs to evacuate South Korean citizens from Vietnam. On
26 April 1975, LST 810 and LST 815 left Saigon. It is important to note that the
 Cold War Refugees 441
LST evacuation was a part of the US-led rescue mission, an effort to transform the
narrative of the Vietnam War from a failed military intervention to a humanitar-
ian rescue mission. As Loescher (2001) describes, ‘these potential victims of a

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Communist takeover vividly symbolized America’s failed crusade in Vietnam
. . . [and to counter this image], US decided to transport them directly to the
United States’ (Loescher 2001: 190; see also Sahara 2012; Espiritu 2014).
The US appealed to other countries to join its rescue and evacuation missions,
but most of the world ignored the US’s appeal, regarding Vietnam as a problem
for the US, who was responsible for the Vietnam War. South Korea and the
Netherlands, along with four other countries that had sent troops to Vietnam,
acquiesced to the request from the US (Nho 2014: 348). During the Vietnam War,
Park Chung-hee declared the South Korean troops to be ‘crusaders of justice,’ and
the government-controlled media portrayed them as fierce warriors against the
Viet Cong, while also being caring and benevolent big brothers to
South Vietnamese civilians (Ahn 2009). The LST rescue was draped in a similar
narrative framework, as indicated by the name of the rescue mission itself—
’Mission Crusade’ (Nho 2014: 345)—and was portrayed as the grand finale to
the countless successful South Korean military missions conducted during the
Vietnam War.
In addition to the pre-planned LST rescue mission, South Korea encountered a
group of unwanted and unexpected Vietnamese refugees. On 2 May 1975, while
the LSTs were returning to South Korea with about 1200 evacuees on board, a
South Korean-flagged ship, Twin Dragon, found 217 Vietnamese refugees on a
sinking boat (P-0016–18/9013/793.3VT). Being aware of the US’s Vietnamese
rescue missions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) suggested that the
Twin Dragon deliver the refugees to the US Navy base in Thailand, but the US
Embassy in Thailand stated that ‘the US government could not be responsible for
the refugees who were rescued at sea; the refugees are the South Korean govern-
ment’s responsibilities’ (P-0016–18/9013/793.3VT: 22). The MOFA appealed to
the US, arguing that the refugees had ‘escaped [Vietnam] because it is widely
known that US Navy ships have been conducting rescue missions’ (P-0016–18/
9013/793.3VT: 44). After learning through a diplomatic channel that the US’s
stand was firm, the South Korean government reluctantly ordered the Twin
Dragon to return to South Korea with the refugees. The Twin Dragon refugee
case revealed the hypocrisy of the US rescue missions and how South Korea, as a
junior partner in the US military missions, played a reluctant role in the refugee
rescue mission. In some ways, the Twin Dragon refugee incident was a harbinger of
South Korea’s involvement with Vietnamese refugees in the following years.
The South Korean government was informed that there were some non-
Koreans among the LST evacuees on board, and the Minister of Foreign
Affairs (MOFA) sent an express telegram on 5 May 1975 to the South Korean
ambassador to the UN, requesting the ambassador ‘to investigate Viet Cong’s
views on the Geneva Conventions’ (P-0016–17/9012/793.3VT: 8). That the min-
ister of MOFA inquired about the Geneva Conventions, not the 1951
Convention, indicated that the South Korean government considered the
442 Nora Hui-Jung Kim
evacuees on board to be victims of a war rather than refugees. Meanwhile, MOFA
identified and categorized the evacuees on board, using four categories. I have
replicated the table used in the original MOFA memo (P-0016–17/9012/793.3VT:

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24) here, as it illustrates the South Korean government’s classification schemas
and habitus.

A. Korean citizens, single/unaccompanied 54

B. Korean residents in Vietnam (including Vietnamese family members)487
C. Family members but not accompanied by their Korean husbands
(Vietnamese)460
D. Pure Vietnamese363

Total 1364
The memo referred to the people on board as ‘evacuees’ and listed them in the
order of their demonstrated ‘Korean-ness.’ On top of the list were (almost all
male) South Korean citizens who did not bring any Vietnamese citizens along
with them, followed by the South Korean citizens (again almost entirely male)
who brought their Vietnamese wives, children, and in some cases in-laws, with
them. Unlike the people in categories A and B, the memo made it clear that the
people on categories C and D were Vietnamese, not South Koreans. The word
‘pure’ in category D is my translation of the Korean word soonsoo used in the
memo, and given the context, the word would mean Vietnamese who did not
have any familial ties with South Korean citizens, rather than referring to one’s
racial or ethnic background. The memo, sent from the director of the South Asia
Division of MOFA to the director of the International Treaties Division of
MOFA, drew particular attention to the people in categories C and D. In the
following, I focus on how categories C and D became ‘refugees’ rather than
evacuees.
In the memo entitled ‘Regarding the Treatment of Stateless People,’ the director
of the South Asia Division requested to be informed of ‘similar cases of handling
of stateless people, of relevant international protocol and conventions, and of
relevant domestic laws’ (P-0016–17/9012/793.3VT: 25, emphasis mine). On the
date when the memo was written and delivered (5 May 1975), the LSTs were
somewhere in the Pacific Ocean en route to the port of Busan. In response, the
director of the International Treaties Division sent a memo, entitled ‘Regarding
Handling of South Vietnamese Refugees’ (P-0016–17/9012/793.3VT: 32, emphasis
mine). In the memo, dated 12 May 1975, the Director stated:

The mentioned South Vietnamese (those who do not have South Korean citizen-
ship) are not stateless people (changes of regimes in a country do not affect the
citizenship of its citizens). Rather, it seems more appropriate to regard them as
pinanmin (refugees). Regarding pinanmin, the following international conventions
stipulate the definition, status determination criteria, and the scope of protections,
. . .. A. the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees . . . B. the Protocol
relating to the Status of Refugees of 1967. . . (P-0016-17/9012/793.3VT: 32-3)
 Cold War Refugees 443
This was the first time that the 1951 Convention was mentioned in official
government documents, and, as a result, the South Vietnamese ‘evacuees’ on
the LSTs had landed as ‘refugees’ in South Korea on 13 May 1975.

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Note that the word pinanmin, the term referring to Korean War displaced
persons, was used in the memo, followed by the English word refugees in paren-
theses. The use of the word pinanmin, instead of nanmin, is notable. The most
direct translation of pinanmin is ‘people escaping from a disaster,’ and the word
does not carry the transborder or persecution aspects that are central to the con-
temporary legal definition of refugee. Under the contemporary usage of the word,
those who are affected by natural disasters and have to leave their residency for a
temporary shelter are referred to as pinanmin. As such, the Korean word pinanmin
is not a legal category; one does not need a government document or certification
to be recognized as such, and ‘illegal pinanmin,’ as a related category, does not
exist. On the other hand, the word nanmin is closer to the conventional legal
definition of refugee, and it is this word that was used in the 2013 Refugee Act
(nanmin bup, instead of pinanmin bup). Before the encounters with the Vietnamese
refugees, nanmin did not refer to refugees who had left their own country or to a
legal status; nanmin and pinanmin were used interchangeably, with the latter being
more commonly used. Introduced to the foreign concept of ‘refugee,’ South
Korean bureaucrats translated it to an existing term with existing cultural signifi-
cance, pinanmin. In doing so, the specific legal implications were lost in the trans-
lation; Vietnamese pinanmin were recipients of ‘gift of freedom’ but not bearers of
legal rights. Once LST evacuees were declared to be ‘refugees,’ the label for the
Twin Dragon ‘rescuees’ was left with little ambiguity. At an inter-ministerial meet-
ing, held on 16 May 1975, it had been agreed that the rescuees on Twin Dragon
were pinanmin.
With the relabeling, from evacuees/rescuees to pinanmin/refugees, of the per-
sons carried on the LSTs and the Twin Dragon, South Korea entered into the
international refugee regime. This period is unique in that South Korea played an
active role in evacuating, providing a refuge and resettling refugees. From the
moment of their arrival at the Busan Port, the South Korean government actively
worked on resettling the South Korean passengers and their family members in
South Korea, while resettling the Vietnamese passengers without familial ties to
ethnic Koreans in third countries. After three months of resettling efforts, how-
ever, the South Korean government still had 102 Vietnamese refugees without any
prospects for resettlement. To address the issue, the Minister of Public Health
requested a meeting with the Minister of the Interior, which took place on 1
September 1975. The two ministers agreed that it was better ‘to settle those refu-
gees with no prospect of resettlement anywhere else in South Korea [than keeping
the refugee camp open] and provide settlement assistant so that they can become
self-sufficient as soon as possible and live harmoniously with our South Korean
citizens’ (BA0840319: 161). In preparation for their settlement in South Korea,
refugees were offered three hours of Korean language class and 4 h of job training
per day. A housing subsidy was provided, along with financial assistance for each
family. Children were enrolled in schools, and their school tuitions and fees were
444 Nora Hui-Jung Kim
paid by the government. These were all covered by the South Korean govern-
ment’s discretionary budget, not by the UNHCR. From 11 to 20 December 1975,
the remaining refugees were permanently resettled within the Korean peninsula.

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The first refugee camp in Busan was officially closed on 20 December 1975.
Although they entered the international refugee regime involuntarily, South
Korea took a relatively active role during this time. This was because, similar to
the US, the bodies of Vietnamese refugees were useful for the Park Chung-hee
administration to maintain the narrative that the Vietnam War had been a legit-
imate battle against communism.

Reluctant Junior Partner in the International Refugee Regime, 1977–1987

In 1977, about one year after the closure of the first Busan refugee camp, South
Korea encountered the second wave of Vietnamese refugees, the so-called ‘boat
people.’ During the second half of 1978, the number of boat arrivals dramatically
increased, and the reports of refugees drowning at sea made a frequent appearance
in the Western media. The UN and the UNHCR came under immense pressure to
get more involved in the issue, and the UN accepted the proposal of UK Prime
Minister Thatcher to hold a special conference to discuss the issue. At the meeting,
the Western countries racialized the issue, claiming that the Vietnamese refugee
problems should be resolved within Asia. A French delegate, for example, advo-
cated for refugee resettlement in Asian countries by arguing that that ‘it is obvious
that for some of them such adjustment will be possible only in an environment
similar to theirs’ (19361/13278/734.39XC: 974). In addition to racialization, the
West framed the Indochinese refugee problems as a strictly humanitarian issue.
The High Commissioner of the UNHCR, for example, stated that ‘there can be no
humane or durable solutions unless governments grant at least temporary asylum
in accordance with internationally accepted humanitarian principles’ (19361/
13278/734.39XC: 926). In contrast, Western countries posited themselves as
champions of humanitarianism, as indicated by the following speech made by
an Australian delegate: ‘Unlike the countries they were forced to leave, Australia
does not discriminate these people’ (19361/13278/734.39XC: 959) and ‘we are here
to find civilized responses to varieties of intolerance’ (19361/13278/734.39XC:
961). As hinted in these statements, by framing the refugee issue as a humanitarian
issue, the first asylum countries such as Malaysia and Thailand, who declared they
would not accept any more refugees, are rendered to be inhumane and
uncivilized, echoing Peterson’s claim that the lingering colonial atmosphere had
shaped the international refugee regime during that time (Peterson 2012). In
doing so, the West effectively erased the French colonization and the US
military intervention in the region as the fundamental causes of the problem,
and imposed the major burden of the Vietnamese refugee problems onto Asian
countries.
The US, who initiated the war and refugee evacuation, utilized a similar raci-
alization strategy to pressure the South Korean government. In a letter dated 21
August 1979, Senator Ted Kennedy urged Park Chung-hee to accept ‘even a
 Cold War Refugees 445
modest number of fellow Asians in need’ for resettlement (19359/13276.734.39XC:
464; emphasis mine). In addition, the US used its political and military leverage
vis-à-vis South Korea to urge the latter’s involvement in asylum and burden-

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sharing. For example, the Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Holbrooke, vis-
ited South Korea in March 1977, and noted that ‘Korea’s contribution is too small
as of now and Korea is being criticized for that’ (19358/13275/734.39XC: 21).
Only after promising to look into the issue was the Prime Minister of South Korea
able to ask Holbrooke about the US’s plans regarding South Korea and the
reduction of the US troop presence on the Korean Peninsula (19358/13275/
734.39XC: 22). As such, South Korea used burden sharing of the Vietnamese
refugees as a means to ensure the continuation of the US’s military protection.
A few days before Holbrooke’s visit, the South Korean government rejected the
UNDP’s request for financial contribution to the UNHCR, citing budgetary
restrictions as a reason (19358/13275/734.39XC: 14). After his meeting with
Holbrooke, the Prime Minister recommended doubling South Korea’s annual
contribution to the UNHCR from $5,000 to $10,000 and pledged to make a
special contribution of $50,000 for the Vietnamese refugee missions (19358/
13275/734.39XC: 46). The South Korean government ran the number by the
US, only to find out the US was not satisfied with the amount. The US ‘suggested’
a $500,000 special contribution, to which the South Korean government acqui-
esced (19358/13275/734.39XC: 67).
In response to pressure from the US, the South Korean government assumed
the role of a reluctant junior player in the international refugee regime. A com-
prehensive report on the Vietnamese refugee issues, compiled by the Southeast
Asia Division of MOFA and submitted to President Park in June 1979, concluded
that ‘the UN and advanced countries are expected to get more involved in the
Indochinese refugee issues,’ and recommend that South Korea ‘should take a part
in the international effort as a country in Asia who has close ties with the ASEAN
countries and as an early developing country’ (19359/13276.734.39XC: 261). With
regard to the settlement of Vietnamese refugees, the report proposed that South
Korea ‘needs to be careful not to give an impression that South Korea is being too
overly self-interested’ (19359/13276.734.39XC: 264). In a similar vein, the repre-
sentatives to the 1979 UN conference on Indochinese refugee issues were given the
specific guidance ‘not to give an impression [at the conference] that South Korea is
willing to assume a leading role on the matter and to make sure that South Korea’s
contribution is more than its fair share as a developing country’ (19360/13277/
734.39XC: 740).
In addition to financial contribution, South Korea also provided a ‘surrogate
refuge’ to Vietnamese boat people. Starting in 1977, unanticipated and unwanted
refugees from Vietnam began arriving in South Korea. The first cohort of boat
people arrived in June 1977, rescued by the Liberian vessel, McCone. Between
1977 and 1989, a few vessels each year delivered Vietnamese boat people to South
Korea. On 13 June 1977, an inter-ministerial meeting was called to discuss the
handling of 38 Vietnamese from the McCone. The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) was
strongly against allowing the Vietnamese to stay in South Korea, in order ‘not to
446 Nora Hui-Jung Kim
set a precedent’ (19689/13952/793.3VT: 801). The representative of the Korean
Central Intelligence Agency had a similar opinion to the MOJ. The Ministry of
Interior showed deference to the MOJ, but also expressed the need for humani-

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tarian consideration when it came to refugee rescues (19689/13952/793.3VT: 806).
MOFA managed to convince more skeptical government bodies by receiving as-
surance from the UNHCR that there would be an early transfer of the refugees,
and then the 38 Vietnamese citizens on the McCone were allowed to land (19689/
13952/793.3VT: 808). From this time on, it was the UNHCR, not the South
Korean government, who played a more significant role in the operation of the
refugee camp and the resettlement of the refugees. South Korea’s role was limited
to that of ‘surrogate refuge.’
The first South Korean-flagged vessel that rescued boat people was the Dongin,
which rescued 20 individuals on its journey to Singapore. The South Korean
government asked Singapore to accept the refugees on the Dongin, but
Singapore refused. The Dongin returned to South Korea with the refugees on 2
August 1977. After the Dongin incident, the South Korean government, and the
shipping companies actively discouraged captains of South Korean-flagged ships
from rescuing boat people. Some captains continued to rescue boat people at the
risk of facing negative consequences. Others complied with the directive, as indi-
cated by a UK newspaper article, dated 15 November 1977, reporting that a UK
vessel rescued nine boat people who had been initially rescued by a South Korean
ship, only to be abandoned after the captain of the ship learning that they were
Vietnamese refugees (19689/13952/793.3VT: 908).
Despite active discouragement, the South Korean government reluctantly
played the role of junior partner to the US-led Indochinese refugee mission. At
an inter-ministerial meeting held on 6 December 1985, the director of the
Southeast Asia division of MOFA stated that South Korea ‘should continue
the current policy [of accepting boat people], given other Asian countries such
as Japan, Hong Kong, and India were hosting many Vietnamese refugees’
(2014070010/793.3VT: 25). The director of the International Treaty of MOFA
seconded, stating that ‘it is better not to suddenly change the Vietnamese refugee
policies, in the spirit of humanitarianism and cooperation with the UN activities,
and against the background of upcoming international events such as the 1988
Seoul Olympics’ (2014070010/793.3VT: 25). The director of the Immigration
Bureau of MOJ also supported the continuation of the current policy, his reason
being ‘the refugees are not settling in our country but leaving for resettlement in a
third country and South Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War’ (2014070010/
793.3VT: 25). Despite the Vietnam War being the direct cause of South Korea’s
entry into the international refugee regime, this is the first and only time that
South Korea’s participation in the Vietnam War was mentioned in the context
of the Vietnamese refugees. Here, we also see the positioning of South Korea as a
subempire, inferior to Western ‘developed’ countries but superior to Vietnam.
Inferiority to the West was used to justify South Korea’s limited contribution
to the burden sharing, but South Korea presented itself superior to communist
Vietnam by providing humanitarian help to its refugees.
 Cold War Refugees 447
No Country for Refugees, 1988–1992
After the July 1979 UN conference, the members of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Hong Kong resumed providing temporary asylum

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to Vietnamese refugees. Boat arrivals started to surge again in 1987, but by this
time, attitudes towards Vietnamese refugees had turned noticeably colder. Faced
with an economic recession and the reduced utility of refugees as a Cold War
political tactic, Western countries had begun to slow down the resettlement pro-
cess and introduce various restrictive criteria for resettlement. By the mid-1980s,
the now-familiar binary between ‘genuine refugee’ and ‘economic migrant’ started
to replace the previous framework of the humanitarian mission, as a way of
referring to the Vietnamese refugee crisis. In April 1988, Malaysia, the most vocal
among the ASEAN countries, gave Western countries an excuse to roll back their
previous support, by declaring that ‘Malaysia worries about the compassion fa-
tigue of the resettlement countries. Despite laudable efforts by resettlement coun-
tries, the numbers do not go down but increase. . .’ (2014070010/793.3VT: 89).
Malaysia’s statement allowed Western countries to reserve compassion for ‘genu-
ine’ refuges, while still maintaining the fac¸ade of being compassionate humani-
tarian countries. In April 1988, Malaysia announced that it would not take in any
more boat people from Vietnam. In June, Hong Kong followed Malaysia’s lead
and declared that it would not acknowledge prima facie refugee status for the boat
people, but instead, each individual must prove themselves to be a genuine refu-
gee. As these events unfolded, another UN meeting was proposed in 1989, and the
Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA) was adopted at that meeting. With CPA,
the refugee status of all new boat arrivals would be determined individually, in
accordance with international standards and criteria, and those who were proven
to be ‘non-genuine’ refugees would be repatriated to Vietnam (Robinson 2004;
Davies 2008). Starting in 1993, the ASEAN countries began to join the Orderly
Return Programme (ORP) with the Vietnamese government, and 25 June 1996
was established as the deadline for repatriation. On 30 June 1996, the UNHCR
stopped all funding for the Vietnamese boat people (Davies 2008: 221).
South Korea noted the changing landscape of the international refugee regime
for Vietnamese refugees. Particularly alarming for the South Korean government
was the more restrictive attitude of the ASEAN countries and Hong Kong, as it
meant that South Korea could become the primary ‘surrogate refuge’ for boat
people. This anxiety was fueled by refugee boats arriving on Korean shores; pre-
viously refugees had been rescued at sea by passing ships and brought to South
Korea. The first such refugee boat arrived on the Korean shore on 5 May 1988,
when a 15-ton ship arrived at Jeju island with 30 Vietnamese on board. The Coast
Guard’s initial report indicated that the Coast Guard had regarded them as ‘boat
refugees escaping from a communist country’, and the refugees all ‘expressed their
wish to live in South Korea’ (CA0390390: 128). However, in the report, the ex-
pression ‘they could be regarded as boat refugees escaping from a community
country’ was crossed out and the sentence was edited to read ‘even if they
expressed their wish to live in South Korea, they are not being allowed to land
448 Nora Hui-Jung Kim
at the moment’ (CA0390390: 128). Only after securing assurance from the
UNHCR that it would pay for all the expenses and would try to resettle them
in a third country as soon as possible, the passengers were allowed to disembark

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and housed at the refugee camp in Busan (2014070010/793.3VT: 78).
The 38 Vietnamese who showed up at the Port of Gunsan about a month later
were not as lucky as the first group. Despite the Coast Guard blocking the ship
from approaching the shore and firing upon them (CA0390390: 4), people on
board pleaded, wept, and threatened that they would all commit suicide if they
were not allowed to land (2014070010/793.3VT: 98). The conditions on the ship
worsened, as one of the people on board miscarried and another lost conscious-
ness. They all jumped in the water when the Coast Guard approached the boat
and climbed onto a nearby breakwater. After a 7 h standoff between the
Vietnamese and South Korean police on a stormy day, the MOJ called a meeting
and concluded that it was impossible to block them without using force
(2014070010/793.3VT: 117). Given that the 1988 Seoul Olympics was only a
few months away, the South Korean government did not wish to risk drawing
international attention to a use of force to deny boat people’s entry to the country.
After getting assurance from the UNHCR, the MOJ reluctantly provided a tem-
porary refuge to the 38 Vietnamese. However, the head of the Gunsan Coast
Guard had to write a detailed report explaining ‘why the Coast Guard failed to
prevent the boat from arriving the shore even with four armed patrol boats’
(CA0390390: 38). Since then, after even more dramatic standoffs between the
refugees and the Coast Guard, the South Korean government allowed only two
more boats to approach the Korean coastline (Nho 2013: 102)
In late August 1989, the South Korean government notified the UNDP office in
South Korea (at the time, the UNHCR did not have an office in South Korea) that
it had officially changed its refugee policies as follows: 1. the Coast Guard will
provide food and fuel to any Vietnamese boats approaching Korean shores for
their continued journey, 2. South Korean-flagged ships will not rescue any drifting
boat people if the ships’ next destination is Korea, 3. ships under other flags will
not be allowed to bring any boat people to South Korea (2014070010/793.3VT:
124). The UNHCR asked the South Korean government to reconsider the policy
changes, and a South Korean diplomat responded that ‘our new policies just
reflect the other countries’ policy changes’ (2014070010/793.3VT: 136). Along
with these policies toward Vietnamese refugees, the public images of refugees
went through a dramatic change during this period in South Korea. Reflecting
the changing international discourse about the boat people, South Korean
authorities questioned boat people’s ‘genuine refugee-ness’ on the basis that ‘a
significant number of them are not from South, but from North Vietnam.
Further, there’s no more wars in Vietnam so they are not genuine political refugees.
For this reason, even the US and Europeans countries, who used to accept them
for resettlement, are reluctant to do so’ (2014070010/793.3VT: 125-6; emphasis
mine). Recall that the first cohort of refugees were portrayed as the embodiment of
anticommunism in the mid-1970s. Such portrayal made them worthy of refuge
and protection. On the contrary, boat people in the 1990s were portrayed as
 Cold War Refugees 449
‘violent, prone to engage in agitation and violent collective activities, as they were
from North Vietnam’ (2014070010/793.3VT: 127). We can also infer from the
statement above that, by the early 1990s, the meaning of ‘refugee’ in South

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Korea became almost fully aligned with the definition in the 1951 Convention:
‘genuine refugees’ are those who have fled from political persecution. In early
February 1933, the last group of 150 Vietnamese refugees left for resettlement
in New Zealand, and the Vietnamese refugee camp in Busan closed permanently.

Discussion: Depoliticization of Refugee Issues and South Korea’s Rise to a

Subempire
In December 1992, just a few months prior to the departure of the last group
refugees and the closure of the refugee camp, South Korea became a signatory of
the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol. In 1993, the Korean National
Assembly amended sections of the Immigration Control Act to comply with the
international refugee law and started to accept asylum applications in 1994. With
this, South Korea finally and officially became a member of the international
refugee regime. After signing on to the Convention, South Korea has gradually
become a more prominent player in the international refugee regime. Since 2000,
South Korea has held a position on the UNHCR Executive Committee
(EXCOM), and Ambassador Choi Seok-young served as the chairperson of the
EXCOM during the 2013–2014 term. The UNHCR Liaison Office was opened in
Seoul in 2001. It enacted a standalone Refugee Act in 2013—the first of its kind in
Asia—and launched a refugee resettlement pilot program in 2015. A few days
after the passing of the law, the UNHCR Korea office made a statement welcom-
ing the passage of the act and commended the South Korean government ‘for its
continued effort to improve its refugee protection system’ (cited in Kim and Kim
2012: 137). Indeed, South Korea seemed to be evolving into a host country for
refugees (Schattle and McCann 2014). How can we explain South Korea’s shifted
attitudes from ‘no country for refugees’ to a seemingly active and willing member
of the international refugee regime? While the space in this article limits full dis-
cussion of this issue, here I briefly present two potential factors: depoliticization of
the refugee issues in the post-Cold War context and South Korea’s rise to the
status of subempire in Asia.
South Korea signed the 1951 Convention in part because of the pressure from
the international community. The UNHCR consistently urged South Korea to
sign the Convention. In September 1980, for example, Ole Volfing, UNHCR
director of External Affairs, visited South Korea to check on the UNHCR-funded
refugee camp in Busan. During his visit, he reminded the bureaucrats at MOFA
that ‘South Korea’s signing would provide moral support for the UNHCR and its
mission. And it will also help assuage the Southeast Asian countries (especially
Malaysia)’ (5472/732.613: 39). The UNHCR’s interest in solidifying the organ-
ization’s legitimacy in Asia was aligned with South Korea’s desire to increase its
international stature and secure its position as a subempire in Asia. The economic
gains from participating in the Vietnam War laid the foundation for South
450 Nora Hui-Jung Kim
Korea’s economic ‘take-off’ and thus its rise to the status of a subempire in Asia.
Based on its increased economic power, South Korea has been pursuing commen-
surate status on the international stage and hosted the 1986 Asian Games and the

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1988 Olympic Games. South Korea was finally admitted to the UN in 1991 and to
the OECD in 1996. Signing the Convention should be understood in the context of
South Korea’s desire for a fuller recognition as a developed nation and for ‘the
honor of being a member of the West that is not only wealthy but moral’ (Sahara
2012: xi).
The end of the Cold War has led to depoliticization of refugee issues, which
have consequently changed from being foreign-policy concerns to specialized hu-
manitarian issues (Zolberg 1988). Relieved from Cold War politics and the burden
of actually hosting refugees, South Korea can reap the symbolic benefit of having
ratified the international convention and having a standalone refugee law, while
using the languages of the international law to expel ‘non-genuine’ refugees with-
out the consequence of international reprobation. For the first 7 years after South
Korea signed the Convention (1994–2000), there were about 100 asylum appli-
cants, but MOJ had not found any of them ‘having a well-found fear of persecu-
tion,’ despite some of these applicants being refugees under the UNHCR mandate
(Jung 2011: 38). The first approved asylum case was decided in February 2001,
and before the passage of the Refugee Act in 2013, close to 5000 more migrants
petitioned for asylum in South Korea, but only about 300 were granted asylum.
The first approved refugee, a political asylee from Ethiopia, did not necessarily
possess more ‘genuine refugee-ness’ than the previously rejected asylum seekers.
Rather, he was lucky in that his application was reviewed in 2000, when South
Korea became a member of the UNHCR Executive Committee (EXCOM), and
the South Korean government believed that ‘not having any refugees does not fit
with the status of a UNHCR EXCOM member state’ (Jung 2011: 38). Among the
approximately 500 asylum seekers from Yemen that made a media sensation in
2018, only two were granted refugee status, after the completion of individual
refugee status determination (RSD) interviews that lasted four months. About
75% of them were given temporary humanitarian status, which allowed them to
legally stay in South Korea for three months. It is noteworthy that neither the
Convention nor the law was rarely mentioned when South Korea was playing the
role of a reluctant junior partner in the midst of the Vietnamese refugee crisis. In
comparison to the Vietnamese refugees, South Korea’s handling of asylum seekers
in general, and the Yemenis asylees in particular, harkens back to the US Vice
President Mandel’s opening statement at the 1979 UN Conference: ‘The civilized
world hid under the cloak of legalism.’ Indeed, concerned that ‘[signing the
Convention] may limit the scopes of actions that our government can take with
regards of Vietnamese refugees’ (5472/732.613: 45), the South Korean govern-
ment expedited the resettlement of the last groups of Cold War-era refugees before
signing the Convention.
 Cold War Refugees 451
Conclusion
This article has highlighted the role that US hegemony and military expansion in
Asia played in expanding the international refugee regime during the Cold War, in

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terms of both generating refugees and pressuring states to provide refuge. South
Korea was introduced to the international refugee regime as a recipient of the ‘gift
of freedom’ from US and UN military forces during the Korean War. It was due
to the ‘debt’ incurred during the Korean War and South Korea’s continued neo-
colonial relationship with the US that South Korea participated in the Vietnam
War, and consequently, received its first internationally recognized refugees.
South Korea reluctantly received refugees under pressure from the US and
Western countries’ racialization of the Vietnamese refugee issues.
When South Korea first encountered refugees in the aftermath of the Vietnam
War, the term ‘refugee’, as a legal category or status, was an alien concept to the
South Korean government. The South Korean bureaucrats initially translated
‘refugee’ to pinanmin, a term referring to Korean War displaced people. By the
early 1990s, the meaning of ‘refugee’ in South Korea became almost fully aligned
with the definition in the 1951 Convention: ‘genuine refugees’ are those who have
fled from political persecution. By signing the 1951 Convention in 1992, South
Korea became an official member of the international refugee regime. Unlike the
Vietnamese refugees, when the Yemeni asylum seekers arrived there was no ques-
tion as to which label to use and which law applied. They were nanmin, and their
status would be determined by the 1951 Convention and the 2013 Refugee Act.
However, this case-study of South Korean refugee policy suggests that refugee
laws, domestic and international, have little impact on the actual handling of
refugees. It seems safe to assume that realpolitik, rather than laws, will continue
to shape South Korea’s role in the international refugee regime.

Funding
This work was supported by Laboratory Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry
of Education of the Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service of the
Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2018-LAB-2250001).

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