China’s policy of forcibly repatriating North Korean refugees means “an awful choice” for families of mixed Chinese and North Korean parentage, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Sunday.

If they register their children so they can attend school, they risk the mother’s deportation to the North and subsequent imprisonment or even execution. If they do not, the child cannot receive an education.

In some parts of Yanbian region in Jilin province bordering North Korea, the report said, local authorities demand written proof that the North Korean mother has been repatriated before the father can register their children.

The U.S.-based group urged China to stop repatriating such refugees, and to ensure that all children of North Korean women can go to school without having to show household registration (hukou) papers.

Schools demand such documents even though Chinese law stipulates that all children shall receive nine years of compulsory and free education regardless of sex, nationality or race, it said.

“China must immediately stop such practices and allow access to education for all children, without preconditions,” said Elaine Pearson, the group’s Asia deputy director, in the report.

Some parents have been forced to use bribery or trickery to ensure children can go to school, the watchdog said.

“It’s unacceptable that children and their parents have to resort to such desperate or illegal measures to enjoy what should be the automatic right of going to school,” Pearson said.

Rights groups estimate there are more than 30,000 North Korean women hiding out in China, according to Kay Seok, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Seoul.

Many of them voluntarily form relationships with Chinese men but some are forced to do so as victims of trafficking, she said.

Exact figures are unavailable but thousands of children of North Korean mothers and Chinese fathers are known to live in China, Seok said.

The report quoted a 42-year-old North Korean woman who lives with a Chinese man as saying: “We have a seven-year-old son. I never committed any crime. But I don’t have any residency status and neither does my son.

“It really worries me that he can’t go to school.”

Pearson urged China to stop arresting and repatriating North Koreans, especially women who have children with Chinese men.

“The policy is driving families apart, and leaving children without education,” she said.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans escape to China and often move on to other countries before seeking refuge in South Korea.

In a policy widely criticized by rights groups, Beijing returns those it catches as “economic migrants.”

North Korea suffers severe food shortages and some residents of frontier provinces cross the border just to secure supplies before returning.

South Korean aid group Good Friends said recently that 13 women and two men were executed in North Korea in February for entering China in search of food.

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