美国国家公共电台 NPR Anti-Refugee Backlash In South Korea Targets Yemenis Fleeing War And Seeking Asylum

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AILSA CHANG, HOST:

More than 500 refugees from war-torn Yemen have found themselves in an unlikely place - the tiny resort island of Jeju in South Korea. The Yemenis are hoping for asylum¹ to stay there. But as they wait, they're catching² backlash from South Koreans. NPR's Elise Hu has this story from Jeju.

ELISE HU, BYLINE³: On a docked fishing boat on Jeju's northwestern shore...

EBRAHIM QAID: Yeah, aboji.

HU: ...Ebrahim Qaid kind calls his Korean boss aboji, or dad. It's a term of endearment⁴ in Korean.

QAID: I love Korea. I love Korea, really.

HU: Qaid found work on this 29-ton boat welding floorboards and making fixes before the ship heads back out to sea. He's doing the kind of jobs most Koreans don't want.

QAID: I was student in Yemen. But because of the war, I need to work for - help my family in Yemen.

HU: He is one of the 561 Yemenis who arrived here since January, thanks to Jeju's policy of allowing foreign nationals to enter without having a visa in advance. They were fleeing a four-year war with no end in sight.

QAID: Because in Yemen, don't have war, don't have anything. Don't have light, don't have hospital.

HU: No lights?

QAID: No lights. For four years, don't have light.

HU: The ongoing⁵ civil war has taken out more than infrastructure⁶. It's killed thousands of civilians⁷. And Yemen is teetering on the brink⁸ of famine. Another Yemeni in Jeju, Omar al-Wahaishi, she, says young men are being forced to choose sides and become conscripts. To avoid that, he fled.

OMAR AL-WAHAISHI: We said, we refuse this kind of politics, that we will not go fight. We don't want to fight. And so if I go back to my city directly, I will be imprisoned⁹ or maybe executed. It's same fate because if I go to prison, I will not get out.

HU: He can't go home, but he and others may not get to stay, either.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Chanting in Korean).

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in Korean).

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Chanting in Korean).

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in Korean).

HU: "Citizens come first. We want safety," crowds chanted in the streets of Seoul Saturday. Some 1,000 demonstrators showed up to rally against the influx¹⁰ of Yemenis. Their arrival threw South Korea into a national debate over its responsibility in the global migration¹¹ crisis.

CHRISTOPHER HAN: They came here without proper legal, you know, process.

HU: Demonstrator Christopher Han says too many foreigners are getting in.

HAN: We are in a position to help them. But the truth is that - the reality is that we have been used by them.

HU: Protesters held up signs saying get out and calling the Yemenis fake refugees. Han says his top concern is violence against locals.

HAN: But it is all about their different idea and belief system. I mean, they're Muslims - different idea and different belief system.

HU: On June 1, South Korean president Moon Jae-in's government ended the visa-free entrance policy for anyone from Yemen, effectively closing the border to Yemeni refugees. The ones already here are blocked from leaving Jeju Island. And half a million Koreans have signed a petition asking the Moon government to turn away refugees by changing policy.

SHARON YOON: I didn't expect Korea to welcome refugees with open arms, right?

HU: Sharon Yoon is a professor of Korean Studies at Seoul's Ehwa University. She's not surprised, as South Korea is 96 percent native Korean. Until 2007, the education system taught students it was ethnically¹² homogenous¹³, a single-blooded nation.

YOON: Yes, there is a lot of pushback. But civil society and xenophobia is not the whole picture. The sense that, like, there is a backlash of accepting refugees all over the world - and Korea is one of those countries.

HU: On Jeju, some Korean employers, like fishing boat owner Lee Shee-hyun, take a why-not attitude to giving Yemenis work.

LEE SHEE-HYUN: (Speaking Korean).

HU: "If they're willing to head out to sea, I'll keep employing them," he tells us.

Omar al-Wahaishi says he's encountered only kindness from Koreans he's met. For those who are less welcoming...

WAHAISHI: I want to give them the message that we are ordinary people. We want to live in peace. We want to live in - safe. And we don't want to cause any problem for anybody. So I hope they understand that we are a peaceful people.

HU: He's now 5,000 miles away from war. His fate, like the 500 others, is in the hands of the Korean government. Elise Hu, NPR News, Jeju, South Korea.