A record number of Russians sought asylum in South Korea last year. It is about 5,750 people, CNN writes, citing data from the South Korean immigration service, UNN reports.
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As noted, this is five times more than in 2022. It is also more than the total number of asylum applications from Russians registered between 1994 and 2019.
According to the Immigration Service, last year also saw the highest number of asylum applications in the last eight years. After Russians, the largest groups of asylum seekers were from Kazakhstan, China, and Malaysia.
As noted, this trend has continued this year: in January, Russians made up the largest group of those who applied for protection.
The most common reasons given by asylum seekers were religious persecution and political persecution. Other reasons included discrimination for belonging to a particular social group, race or nationality.
The service did not specify the reasons given by the Russian asylum seekers.
South Korea has notoriously harsh immigration laws, including those regarding asylum applications.
Over the past three decades, only 4,052 people have been recognized as refugees in South Korea out of more than 103,000 asylum applications, the report says.
The flow of Russian asylum seekers has especially increased since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Over the past two years, hundreds of thousands of people have fled Russia, many of them to escape military conscription.
In 2022, in South Korea, five Russians were stuck at Incheon International Airport near the capital Seoul, trying to evade mobilization in Russia.
The South Korean Ministry of Justice denied their application for refugee status, effectively leaving them in an uncertain position at the airport. It was only in early 2023 that the two men were allowed to leave the airport. One of them told CNN that he was initially going to go to Kazakhstan, but changed his mind when he learned that this former Soviet republic was deporting fugitive Russians.
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