Dissident flees China for the 4th time, spends 30 hours at sea and is rescued

A Chinese dissident made a daring 30-hour escape from China by sea to South Korea in his fourth attempt to escape his country's authorities and reunite with his family, who have been granted asylum in Canada.

Dong Guangping, a former police officer who faced years of arrest and detention for his activism, fled using an inflatable boat and was rescued by the South Korean Coast Guard on Monday, his lawyer and a fellow activist told CNN.

Dong - who was also granted asylum in Canada - had previously fled to Thailand and then Vietnam, but was detained and deported back to China by authorities in those countries, causing anguish for his family and criticism from human rights groups and United Nations officials.

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His arrival in South Korea could now put pressure on the administration of President Lee Jae Myung, who took office last year and has been trying to restore his country's often unstable relations with China.

South Korean Coast Guard officials confirmed that fishermen spotted an unidentified vessel on Monday night and reported it to authorities.

The Coast Guard told CNN that the person on board was a Chinese citizen in his 60s, but declined to confirm his identity under the country's privacy protection law.

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Dong's lawyer, Kim Joo-kwang, confirmed his client's identity to CNN but said he could not share further details because the Coast Guard 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 country's authorities had also confirmed his identity.

"For a long time, we discussed ways to escape China," she told CNN. Dong reported to Sheng that he had spent more than 30 hours at sea since leaving Weihai, a coastal city in eastern China's Shandong province.

"When I talked to him, he said, 'I've arrived!' He was very proud of that," she recalled.

Dong Guangping Chinese dissident and activist who left China - Reproduction/Human Rights in China
Dong reported that his boat's engine broke down as he approached the coast of Taean, a county in western South Korea. He hadn't slept for two days and was about to pass out when he reached South Korean waters, according to Sheng.

"He was lucky to get close to shore," she said. "It was a small boat at sea, so it's very difficult to control."

Human Rights in China has called on South Korea to protect Dong and not return him to the country.

"For more than a decade, he never stopped fighting for his freedom and reunion with his family," the organization said.

"The fact that a man in his seventies was forced to cross the open sea in a small inflatable boat is in itself a devastating indictment of the human rights situation in China."

CNN has reached out to the Canadian and South Korean foreign ministries, as well as the Chinese embassy in Seoul, seeking comment.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on the case when asked about it at a regular press conference on Wednesday (27).

Previous escape attempts
Dong, 68, worked as a police officer in Zhengzhou, a city in central China's Henan province, before being fired for signing a letter commemorating the 10th year of the bloody crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

He was jailed for three years in 2001 for activism and detained again in May 2014 for taking part in another tribute to the Tiananmen Square victims, according to Amnesty International.

In 2015, Dong fled to Thailand with his wife and daughter, where the three sought refuge with the UN.

While his wife and daughter managed to move to Canada, Dong was forcibly deported to China by Thai authorities, despite pleas from his family and human rights groups at the time. He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and released in 2019.

Unable to leave the country, Dong unsuccessfully tried to swim to Kinmen, an island controlled by Taiwan a few kilometers off the east coast of China.

In 2020, he managed to cross illegally into Vietnam, but was eventually arrested and deported by Vietnamese authorities in 2022.

He was sentenced to 11 months in prison in China for "illegal border crossing" and released in October 2023, according to the international human rights organization Front Line Defenders.

During the period Dong was missing, his family in Canada made public appeals for information about his whereabouts, including sending letters to the Chinese and Vietnamese embassies in Ottawa.

His daughter, Katherine Dong, previously stated that he had tried to flee China so many times because "his dream of reuniting with his family was so strong."

"And then, once again, that dream of freedom was ripped away from us," 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, per Sheng and other friends.

Source: CNN