January 17, 2012
SEOUL (AFP) - A North Korean defector was sentenced to three years in prison Tuesday for raping a female fellow refugee in the course of escaping from the communist country.
The man, identified only as Nahm, 37, was convicted of raping the 26-year-old woman in May last year when they were staying together in a temporary shelter in the northeastern Chinese city of Yanji.
The woman reported Nahm to authorities after they were transported to South Korea for resettlement.
The man deserved stern punishment for raping the woman who was "in a difficult state due to risks like being arrested", the court in Euijeongbu, north of Seoul, said in a statement quoted by Yonhap news agency.
The man was accused of threatening the woman, saying that Chinese police would arrest and repatriate them if she yelled, it said.
About 23,000 North Koreans have fled their poverty-stricken homeland for South Korea since the 1950-1953 war, the vast majority in recent years.
They typically escape on foot via an increasingly porous border to China, where they hide out and then travel to a third country to seek resettlement in South Korea.
