The South Korean Unification Minister, Kim Yung-ho, and other senior officials attended a conference in Seoul and called on China to protect thousands of North Koreans defectors from forced repatriation after borders are reopened.

Kim stressed that “North Korean defectors in China should be defined as refugees who have the right to protect their lives and human rights.”

He added that “The government will accept all North Korean defectors who wish to come to South Korea.”

Choe Jae-hyung, a National Assembly parliamentarian with South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party of Korea, commented that “China is ignoring the preference of the migrants and their likely fate if forced to return to the North.”

Conference speakers demanded the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to take action, including urging China to adhere to various human rights conventions it is a signatory to and leveraging with the Chinese officials to avoid negative publicity before hosting the Hangzhou Asian Games in late September 2023.

Pyongyang made its first public acknowledgement of a U.S. soldier, Travis King’s, deliberate and illegal crossing from the South Korean side of the Joint Security Area into North Korea on July 18.

King became the first American confirmed to be detained in the North in nearly five years.

According to North Korea state agency KCNA, “During the investigation, Travis King confessed that he had decided to come over to the DPRK as he harboured ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the US Army.”

King’s uncle told ABC News that King was experiencing racism during his military deployment and he no longer sounded like himself after spending time in a South Korean jail.

Since Pyongyang described King as an illegal entrant, rather than someone who “voluntarily” entered the North, Tae Yong-ho, a former minister at the North Korean Embassy in London before his defection in 2016, speculated that King might eventually be released as North Korea did not express its intentions of accepting him as a refugee and spoke about a third country resettlement.

North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, dismissed his country’s top general and ordered the military to “gird for a war.”

According to North Korean state media, Kim held a meeting of the Central Military Commission in Pyongyang on August 9, where he discussed plans against its enemy. However, Kim did not say who the enemy was.

During the meeting, Gen. Pak Su-il was fired as Chief of the General Staff and Vice Marshal Ri Yong-gil was appointed in his place. According to a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University, Leif-Eric Easley, “Ri Yong Gil is a longstanding member of North Korea’s military elite, who before making it to the top, experienced ups and downs during his career. Seven years ago, he was even rumored to have been executed after a personnel reshuffle.”

Various other “leading commanding officers” were also dismissed, transferred or appointed during the meeting.

Easley explained that “Kim Jong Un frequently rotates leadership posts below him to prevent the emergence in North Korea of anyone like [Wagner Group founder] Yevgeny Prigozhin, who challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority after amassing personal control of financial assets and loyalty among armed forces.”

U.S. President, Joe Biden, agreed to deepen military and economic cooperation with Japanese Prime MInister, Fumio Kishida, and South Korean President, Yoon Suk-yeol, to condemn China’s growing power and nuclear threats from North Korea.

The leaders said in a joint statement that “The purpose of our trilateral security cooperation is and will remain to promote and enhance peace and stability throughout the region.”

The three countries would add a new “duty to consult” security pledge and establish a communications hotline to discuss responses to threats or security crises in the Pacific.

The pledge acknowledges that a threat to one is “a threat to all,” according to a senior Biden administration official.

The nations also agreed to hold military training exercises and trilateral summits annually, as well as to share real-time information on North Korean missile launches by the end of 2023.