A North Korean refugee claimant is continuing his fight to stay in Canada, appealing to both the Immigration Department and Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan.

Song Dae Ri worked as North Korean trade official in Beijing for years before defecting to Canada with his wife and son in 2001.

His wife was lured home in 2002 by her parents and executed by the North Koreans shortly after.

The Refugee Board has issued a removal order for Ri, even though the board has acknowledged that he might face the same fate as his wife. They have, however, allowed his six-year-old son, Chang-Il, to stay.

Ri is certain of the outcome if he returns to North Korea.

"I'm going to die.... I feel defeated at this point... my only sin is that my birthplace is North Korea," he told CTV News.

He has appealed the ruling with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration for permission to stay on humanitarian grounds. Ri has also asked the newly-created Canadian Border Services Agency for a pre-removal risk assessment.

The agency, which is headed by McLellan, will assess the risk to his life if returned home and decide whether he can stay in Canada.

A decision could be made on the pre-removal order as early as today. The appeal to the Immigration Department could take up to two years.

Robert Moorhouse, who is representing Ri, said the big problem now is that because his client has been branded a war criminal, even if he was granted a stay of removal, he wouldn't be granted permanent residency without government intervention.

"He's starting to lose faith in the system," Moorhouse told CTV's Canada AM. "I'm not so sure that we're going to have an answer immediately."

IRB member Bonnie Milliner says Ri is not "deserving of Canada's protection'' because he was a high ranking member of the North Korean government and was complicit in crimes against humanity.

However, Canada's War Crimes Unit disagrees. It assured the board in writing that Ri was "not a person of interest to them'' and there was no evidence he had committed crimes against humanity.

Moorhouse said Milliner's decision was based "only on the possibility that he may be complicit like every other North Korean who happened to work for the North Korea government."

In her decision, written in September 2003, Milliner questioned why Ri failed to dissociate himself from government abuses at the first available opportunity, and defected only when he feared his own life was in danger.

"While (Ri) may not have personally committed any atrocities, I believe that on a balance of probabilities he was aware of the North Korean government's excesses... and waited 10 years (to leave)," she concluded.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Ri explained that he and his colleagues lived under a complicated surveillance system in Beijing and escape would have been difficult. He says he was a low-level trade official who helped buy wheat for his country, not a high-ranking diplomat.

He told CTV that he expected Canada to welcome him with open arms.

"I thought that Canada was truly a democratic country and believed I would be received as a refugee claimant."

The local South Korean community in Toronto has taken up Ri's cause. Several thousand people, including the publisher of the Korean Times Daily, have written letters of support and signed petitions imploring the Canadian government to allow Ri to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

Ri says he fears North Korean agents may attempt to track him down in Canada and assassinate him. That is why he lives in seclusion in Toronto and doesn't want his picture published.

In the past seven years, 35 North Koreans have applied for refugee status in Canada; just two have been granted asylum.