Human Rights in China (HRIC) urgently calls on the South Korean government and the international community to protect Chinese human rights defender Dong Guangping, who arrived in South Korea on the night of May 25 after crossing the Yellow Sea in an inflatable boat to seek political asylum. He is currently being detained by the Taean Coast Guard in South Chungcheong Province on allegations of violating immigration laws.

Dong Guangping, 68, from Zhengzhou, Henan Province, is a veteran dissident who has courageously resisted the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rule for decades. In 1999, he was dismissed from the police force after signing a petition supporting the victims of the June Fourth massacre. He was later convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” and imprisoned from 2001 to 2004. In July 2014, he was again detained for participating in activities commemorating the Tiananmen massacre and was held in solitary confinement for more than eight months.

In 2015, Dong and his family fled to Thailand, where they were officially recognized as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and approved for resettlement in Canada. However, just before departure, Thai authorities — under pressure from the Chinese government — unlawfully deported him back to China, while his family was able to resettle in Canada. Upon his return, Dong was subjected to a forced televised confession and sentenced again, serving another prison term from 2016 to 2019.

After his release, he continued to face constant surveillance, harassment, and economic persecution. In December 2019, he attempted to swim to Kinmen in search of freedom but was intercepted and returned. In January 2020, he escaped to Vietnam, hoping eventually to reunite with his family in Canada. Yet on August 24, 2022, Vietnamese police detained him in Hanoi, forcibly disappeared him, and secretly deported him back to China in blatant violation of the international principle of non-refoulement. In April 2023, a court in Zhengzhou sentenced him to 11 months in prison for “illegally crossing the border.” He was released in October 2023.

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.

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.

HRIC urges the South Korean government to uphold humanitarian principles and international human rights obligations by ensuring that Dong Guangping is not returned to China, where he faces a grave risk of persecution and torture. We further call on South Korea to allow him to seek political asylum or facilitate his safe passage to reunite with his family in Canada.