By Yoonjung Seo, Stephanie Yang, CNN
(CNN) — A Chinese dissident has made a daring 30-hour escape from China by sea to South Korea, his fourth attempt to try and flee authorities in his homeland and reunite with his family who have been granted asylum in Canada.
Dong Guangping, a former police officer who has faced years of imprisonment and detention for his activism, fled using an inflatable boat and was picked up by South Korean Coast Guard on Monday, his lawyer and a fellow activist told CNN.
Dong – who has also been granted asylum in Canada – previously fled to Thailand and later Vietnam, only to find authorities in those countries detain and deport him back to China, sparking anguish for his family and criticism from rights groups and United Nations officials.
His arrival in South Korea could now put pressure on the administration of President Lee Jae Myung – who took office last year and has tried to reset his country’s often shaky ties with China.
South Korean Coast Guard officials confirmed fishermen spotted an unidentified boat on Monday evening and reported it to the authorities.
The Coast Guard told CNN the person on the boat was a Chinese national man in his 60s, but declined to confirm his identity under to the country’s privacy protection law.
Dong’s lawyer, Kim Joo-kwang, confirmed his identity with CNN, but said he could not share further details because the Coast Guard’s investigation is ongoing.
Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian activist, said she had spoken to Dong by phone since his arrival in South Korea, adding that the Coast Guard had also confirmed his identity to her.
“For a long time, we discussed ways to escape China,” she said.
Dong told Sheng he spent more than 30 hours on the water since leaving Weihai, a coastal city in China’s eastern Shandong province.
He said his boat engine broke down as he approached the coast of Taean, a county in western South Korea. He had not slept for two days and was about to faint when he arrived in South Korea’s waters, according to Sheng.
“He was lucky to get close to the shore,” she said.
Rights group Human Rights in China has called on South Korea to protect Dong and not send him back.
“For more than a decade, he has never ceased striving for liberty and reunion with his family,” the group said. “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.”
CNN has reached out to the foreign ministries of both Canada and South Korea for comment as well as the Chinese embassy in Seoul.
Previous escape attempts
Dong, 68, worked as a police officer in Zhengzhou, a city in China’s central Henan province, before he was fired for co-signing a letter commemorating the 10th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
He was imprisoned for three years in 2001 for activism and arrested again in May 2014 for participating in another memorial for Tiananmen Square victims, according to Amnesty International.
In 2015, Dong fled to Thailand with his wife and daughter, where the three of them sought refugee status from the UN.
While his wife and daughter were able to move to Canada, Dong was forcibly returned to China by the Thai authorities, despite appeals from his family and rights groups at the time. He was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and released in 2019.
Barred from leaving the country, Dong tried unsuccessfully to swim to Kinmen, an island controlled by Taiwan a few kilometers away from China’s east coast.
In 2020, he was able to illegally cross into Vietnam, but was eventually arrested and again sent back by Vietnamese authorities in 2022. He was sentenced to 11 months in prison in China for “illegal border crossing” and was released in October 2023, according to the international human rights organization Front Line Defenders.
During Dong’s disappearance at that time, his family in Canada issued public appeals for his whereabouts, including delivering letters to the Chinese and Vietnamese embassies in Ottawa.
His daughter Katherine Dong previously said he had made so many attempts to flee China because “his dream of being reunited with family was so strong.”
“And then again that dream of freedom was snatched away,” she said at the time. “I know that in China he will face more persecution, more mistreatment, more injustice.”
In response to his recent escape, Dong’s family declined to comment through Sheng and other friends.
Desperate measures
In recent years, China has tightened its grip on protests and political dissent, aided by sophisticated censorship and surveillance through facial recognition and other artificial intelligence tools.
That’s pushed some Chinese dissidents toward more unconventional escape routes, instead of travelling through neighboring countries such as Vietnam or Thailand, which have a mixed record on protecting Chinese dissidents.
In August 2023, a Chinese dissident crossed the sea from China’s eastern Shandong province to the South Korean port city Incheon — a journey of about 400 kilometers (250 miles) — on a jet ski.
The man, believed to be Chinese activist Kwon Pyong, made the daring crossing carrying only a helmet, binoculars, a compass and five 25-liter (6.6 gallon) fuel tanks tied to the jet ski, according to the South Korea’s Coast Guard.
Canada has a long track record of providing sanctuary to Chinese dissidents.
Many Chinese activists have also found safety in the US over the years. But that avenue has been narrowed by the Trump administration’s dramatic restrictions on the number of refugees allowed to enter the country annually, with an exception for White South Africans.
It is unclear whether Dong plans to apply for refugee status in South Korea, which is known for notoriously strict immigration policies including requests for asylum.
The Coast Guard told CNN Dong has been arrested on suspicion of violating immigration law and that his case will later be passed to prosecutors.
Sheng has written to Canada’s department of global affairs about Dong’s case and said she urged South Korean authorities not to return Dong to China.
“Given his history, any forcible repatriation would place him at grave risk of imprisonment, torture, disappearance, and potentially death,” she wrote in her letter to Global Affairs Canada.
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