Importantly, the draft bill seeks to make it easier for North Koreans to leave the country. If North Koreans were allowed to vote with their feet, the Dear Leader would lose in a landslide. The model is Hungary and East Germany, where an immigration outflow in 1989 created the crisis that collapsed the Eastern Bloc.
There are an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 North Koreans already living in China. The bill would condition funding for the United Nations on its entering binding international arbitration with China over the status of North Korean refugees. China treats them as economic migrants who can be sent back to North Korea in the most brutal fashion possible, when they are really refugees who cannot be repatriated.
Meanwhile, U.S. immigration policy toward North Korea is shockingly stingy (if North Koreans were Mexicans, they would get much more generous treatment). The bill would make it possible for as many as 30,000 North Korean refugees to enter the United States this year, creating pressure -- by example -- on the South to honor its commitment to welcome North Korean refugees.
The bill's architects contemplate using an even more forceful stick: A provision would stipulate that South Korea gets no U.S. aid to handle the collapse in Pyongyang unless it has had a hand in helping bring it about. If all South Korea cares about is its budget, this at least should get its attention. And maybe one day again the South will understand that human rights, not bribes, is the answer in North Korea.