Choi Yong-hun
November 29, 2006

Choi Yong-hun was sentenced in Yantai City, Shandong Province, China on May 22, 2003 to 5 years in prison for assisting in the escape of North Korean refugees from China to South Korea. He was released after serving 4 years.

Rev. Phillip Buck
August 22, 2006

For 15 months, Phillip Buck, 69, an evangelical pastor from Seattle, Washington sat in a jail cell in northeastern China his health deteriorating, not knowing when—or even if—he would get out and see his family in the U.S. again. The only thing he knew, he wrote in a letter from the jailhouse earlier this year, is that his cause was just.

Takayuki Noguchi
August 9, 2004

Noguchi, member of the Japanese NGO Life Funds for North Korean Refugees (LFNKR), was sentenced to 8 months in prison and fined 20,000 RMB (about US$2,778). He was charged with one count of illegally transporting people with the intent of crossing the border (Article 321 of the Chinese Domestic Criminal Code) and an additional count of attempting to assist in illegally crossing the border (Article 61).

Seok Jae-hyun
March 22, 2004

They confiscated his cameras and film, tried and sentenced him to two years in jail for attempting to smuggle North Korean refugees into South Korea via China, confined him in a cell with dozens of long-term prisoners, and left him frostbitten and underfed for 14 months.