hankyoreh

A man keeps watch outside the Ryukyung Restaurant in Ningbo

A restaurant manager known to have orchestrated a recent group defection of employees at an overseas North Korean restaurant reportedly left his co-worker wife behind in China when he arrived in South Korea.

Sources alleged that the 36-year-old manager, identified by the initial “H,” fled with 1.5 million yuan (US$232,000) embezzled from the Chinese owner he partnered with. The circumstances, along with evidence that the manager and 13 employees had long planned their flight before suddenly leaving in a hurry, are raising questions over whether the defection - the subject of a surprise announcement by the South Korean government ahead of the general elections - was a planned operation with National Intelligence Service (NIS) involvement.

Hankyoreh reporting on Apr. 12 found a total of 20 employees affiliated with North Korea’s Foreign Culture Liaison Committee, including the manager, to have been working at the Ryukyung restaurant in Ningbo, a city in China’s Zhejiang Province. Thirteen were involved in the defection, while the other seven remained behind in China, including the wife of H, who organized the South Korea journey, sources said. All seven are reportedly still in China at present.

A local source familiar with the situation said H and the other 12 employees fled while the other seven employees, including H’s wife, were out buying daily necessities.

The couple had reportedly been married for around eighteen months. H had been in charge of managing the passports of the female employees he defected with, and the circumstances of their departure while his wife was out suggest an emergency situation rather than a planned move.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense that a manager with enough power to manage passports would have planned a defection where he was leaving his wife behind,” said a North Korean defector with experience working at a restaurant in China.

At least one source has alleged that H left with 1.5 million yuan in money belonging to the restaurant owner, a Chinese national.

“My understanding is that the Chinese partner alerted security authorities after the manager disappeared with 1.5 million yuan of his money,” the source said.

The proprietor of a store near the restaurant said the restaurant “was closed for a day and night, and there were rumors that the manager had taken a large sum from the Chinese owner.”

“There‘s been talk about this creating a lot of trouble for the owner,” the proprietor added.

Some have suggested the money may have been a factor in H’s decision to organize the defection. An inter-Korean relations expert familiar with defector-related cases explained, “In most cases with people working at overseas North Korean businesses or in trade, their defection had to do with money issues.”

If H‘s situation was the factor behind the group defection, it would mean South Korean authorities were incorrect in ascribing it to Seoul’s own North Korea sanctions, which included measures to discourage people from eating at North Korean restaurants.

“Usually the [South Korean] government does assist with the defection process, but not in this way,” said a former senior official in the areas of unification, foreign affairs, and security.

“There‘s a lot here to suggest they were trying to manufacture a ’group defection‘ and went overboard.”

The group of 13 restaurant workers, including H, reportedly traveled from Ningbo to Shanghai over land on Apr. 5 before traveling to Malaysia the next morning and arriving at Incheon International Airport on Apr. 7.

Malaysia allows North Korean nationals to enter without a visa. Processing of documents there for the defectors’ arrival in South Korea appears to have happened much more quickly than in previous cases.

“When you’re traveling from a third country to South Korea, the document preparations can take quite a long time, sometimes several months,” said a man from North Korea who defected while dispatched to China. “If [the defectors] did just stop briefly in Malaysia before coming in, then it looks as though the South Korean intelligence organization had everything prepared in advance.”

Private South Korean and overseas groups involved in defections said they only found out about the group departure after Seoul’s announcement. In the past, such groups have typically assisted defectors by finding routes while South Korean authorities assisted - even in cases with support from the NIS and other state institutions. This time, the groups were reportedly unaware of the situation.

“The group defection was made public with the North Korean human rights groups knowing anything about it,” said a source familiar with the North Korean situation. “That couldn’t have happened unless the NIS was planning and orchestrating the defection.”

North Korean authorities immediately reported the employees missing to Chinese authorities on Apr. 6, and the authorities began an investigation into the possibility of a crime against the Chinese owner the following day, local sources said. The circumstances further suggest the Chinese government may have had no prior knowledge of the restaurant employees’ departure.

By Kim Jin-cheol, staff reporter and Kim Oi-hyun, Beijing correspondent in Ningbo

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]