NEW YORK — With her accordion and a suitcase of spring clothes, Ma Young-ae flew from Seoul to Atlanta two years ago for a monthlong tour playing folk songs in church basements.
But when it came time to return to Seoul with her musical troupe, Ma and her husband, North Korean defectors who had quarreled with the South Korean tour organizer, refused to go to the airport.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday May 09, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 34 words Type of Material: Correction
Asylum seekers: An article in Monday's Section A about North Korean defectors incorrectly identified Jesse Moorman as an attorney with the firm IRC. He is a lawyer for Human Rights Project in Los Angeles.
What might have been just another spat between a prima donna and her manager has turned into a diplomatic incident that could strain relations between the United States and South Korea, one of its closest allies.
Ma, 50, has filed for political asylum in the United States, claiming repression by the South Korean government. About 20 other North Koreans have filed similar petitions in U.S. immigration courts making the same argument, and in at least one case last month, asylum has been granted.
Ma, a petite beauty with a heart-shaped face and daubs of purple eye shadow, defected from North Korea to China in 1999 and came to Seoul in 2000. She said she got into trouble when she became active in human rights organizations in the South that criticized the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
" 'Don't talk about starvation. Don't talk about human rights,' " Ma said she was warned repeatedly by South Korean intelligence officials assigned to watch over her.
"The South Korean government doesn't want anyone making statements that would antagonize Kim Jong Il," she said in an interview in her lawyer's office in New York.
Like Cuban exiles, North Korean defectors tend to be unabashedly anticommunist -- a stance at odds with the South Korean government's policy of rapprochement with the Pyongyang regime.
"The South Koreans are practically keeping these defectors under house arrest. They don't want anybody to rain on their sunshine," said Michael Horowitz, a conservative activist with the Washington-based Hudson Institute, referring to the "sunshine policy" of cooperation with North Korea.
Ma is not the only North Korean defector to voice complaints. Many have said they were followed by intelligence agents and refused passports that would allow them to leave South Korea.
A former missile scientist who testified before Congress about North Korean weapons of mass destruction in 2003 has complained that his wife, a fellow defector, received so many threatening phone calls from South Korean agents while he was in the United States that she was hospitalized for stress.
