Chinese dissident who fled to South Korea by dinghy arrives in Canada

HONG KONG (AP) — A Chinese political dissident who fled to South Korea last month in a dinghy has arrived in Canada, his friend said on social media on Saturday.

Dong Guangping was aboard a 3.3-meter (10.8-foot) inflatable boat in the waters off a western South Korean island in May when he was detained by South Korea’s coast guard for allegedly violating the country’s immigration law. It was his fourth known attempt to flee China.

At a court hearing in South Korea, he told reporters that he hopes to go to Canada to reunite with his wife and daughter, who have already been resettled there, according to South Korean media.

In a post Saturday on X, his friend Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian activist, said Dong had landed in Toronto following an Air Canada flight on Friday.

“He just had a big bowl of noodles with eggs, tomatoes and shrimps,” she wrote in the post, adding that she has spent more than 10 years trying to get him out of China.

She attached a photo of Dong in a car with her and another photo of Dong holding a bowl.

Dong, a former police officer in China, has been detained several times for his activism. He lost his job as a police officer in 1999 after he co-signed a letter commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to Amnesty International.

He was imprisoned for three years in 2001 for “inciting subversion of state power” and spent more than eight months behind bars after being arrested in 2014 for participating in a memorial for victims of the Tiananmen crackdown, according to past statements from Amnesty International.

He previously escaped to Thailand and Vietnam, but authorities there deported him back to China. Dong also tried unsuccessfully to swim to a Taiwanese island.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has not immediately commented.

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This article has been updated to reflect that Dong has one daughter in Canada, instead of daughters.

Kanis Leung, The Associated Press