Pie in the Sky, Sunshine and Gumdrops Fantasy Editorial of the Year.

From OpinionJournal:

Let Them Go
China should open its border to North Korean refugees.
BY MELANIE KIRKPATRICK

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Oh, Melanie!

Bring on the flying pigs!


If China is to assume what it considers to be its rightful place as a great power, now is the moment. The world is looking to Beijing as the only government with a measure of influence over its lunatic nuclear ward in the Hermit Kingdom. The question is, will it use it?

The Slave China regime is not interested in being a part of the community of nations. It is only interested in diminishing the power of the world's only superpower. (Just like the Democrasses. Surprise!) The Slave Korean regime comes in handy for just that purpose.

China says it favors "punitive" actions on Pyongyang for its apparent nuclear test last week, and there's talk--so far desultory--of sanctions. But no one is speaking publicly about Beijing's biggest source of influence: the 900-mile border it shares with North Korea. Opening the frontier to refugees would put pressure on Kim Jong Il to give up his nukes or watch his regime implode. As Mark Palmer, U.S. ambassador to Hungary in 1989, has noted, the East German refugees who passed through that country en route to West Germany sped the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The plight of North Korean refugees hiding in northeastern China is a humanitarian crisis that has received scant global notice. No one knows how many are in hiding or how many Beijing has deported back to North Korea in violation of its obligations under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. China refuses to let the United Nations or other countries help the North Koreans.

Now, three official Chinese government documents--obtained privately and smuggled out of the country--show that the humanitarian crisis may be more dire than widely believed and the burden on China heavier. Two of the documents are from the Public Security Bureau--one from the Border Police and the other from a police station along the border. The third is from the Finance Bureau of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, home to many ethnic Koreans.

The documents were obtained by a U.S.-South Korean group that helps North Korean refugees navigate the underground railroad to safety out of China. The group prefers to remain anonymous for fear that its work could be endangered. They have been vouched for to me by two other sources, one on Capitol Hill and another at an international human-rights organization.

The Border Police document, dated Jan. 10, 2005, begins blandly enough: "From the start of illegal border crossings in 1983," it says, "the number of illegal immigrants from North Korea that have stayed in China has increased every year." It adds, "Public Security and Armed Police departments have strengthened preventative and deportation efforts."

The numbers it reports are newsworthy--and staggering: "To date, almost 400,000 North Korean illegal immigrants have entered China and large numbers continue to cross the border illegally." And, "As of the end of December 2004, 133,009 North Korean illegal immigrants have been deported." While Chinese authorities obviously know how many refugees they have deported, by definition they can't know how many are in hiding. The estimate of 400,000 is sure to be low.

The Yanbian Finance Bureau document, dated Oct. 19, 2004, provides further evidence of the extent of the crisis. It is a letter to provincial authorities requesting more money to help with deportation efforts. "According to statistics from the Public Security, border police and civil administration, more than 93,000 refugees are still living in Yanbian Prefecture." The letter goes on to say that although the Border Police Bureau has established "six new refugee-deportation and detention centers," it does not have sufficient funds to do the job. Yanbian requests 30 million yuan ($3.8 million) a year "to solve this financial problem."