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Lawyers from MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society hold a press conference in front of the North Korean Defector Protection Center in Siheung

The current circumstances of 13 staff who entered South Korea on Apr. 7 after fleeing a North Korean restaurant in China are the focus of growing attention.

Amid reports in the North Korean media about the death of one of them - a 22-year-old surnamed Seo - the National Intelligence Service (NIS) has moved to prevent attorneys from the group MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society from meeting with them. Both the Ministry of Unification and the NIS have officially stated that all staff are “healthy and undergoing questioning.”

After rejecting MINBYUN’s request for a meeting, the NIS announced on May 17 that the “twelve female staff at the North Korean restaurant [not including a male manager] are North Korean defectors who have requested protection of their own free will and are not subject to meetings with attorneys like refugees or criminal suspects.” The agency also said the defectors had been met by a human rights protection officer from the North Korean defector protection center (formerly the NIS’s joint questioning center) where they are staying while they undergo questioning.

But the NIS also declined to give specifics, saying they could not disclose the date of the defectors’ meeting with the human rights protection officer.

“Our understanding is that the officer had not seen them as recently as May 13, when MINBYUN officially requested a meeting,” said Chae Hee-jun, an attorney with MINBYUN.

“Are they saying that there was a meeting with the officers over the weekend on May 14 and 15?” Chae asked.

Since opening in 2008, the NIS’s joint questioning center has been the subject of questions surrounding possible human rights infringements due to its complete isolation - particularly in the wake of a scandal over the agency’s falsification of evidence in a high-profile case of alleged espionage by a Seoul city official and North Korean defector. The situation prompted the NIS to change the name of the center in 2014 to the North Korean Defector Protection Center and to announce the appointment of a human rights protection officer to provide legal counseling to defectors.

Without any confirmation of a meeting with the officer, MINBYUN is maintaining that the defectors should be ensured the right to legal assistance. Recommendations on the detention of North Korean defectors announced by the United Nations Human Rights Committee on Nov. 5 state that they must be guaranteed the right to attorney assistance throughout the detention period. Meanwhile, the waitresses’ families have sent appeals to the UN Human Rights Council and other international organizations claiming that the defectors, mostly aged in their early 20s, were “lured and abducted” by the NIS. The fact that one of them is underage - a 17-year-old surnamed Ri - is another factor in MINBYUN’s determination that the defectors urgently need legal help.

At the same time, the rumblings that Seo starved herself to death - first made on May 9 by the North Korean news outlet Meari and later repeated by the US-based Minjok Tongsin and the South Korea’s Jaju Sibo - are likely to be propaganda from Pyongyang, particularly in light of the way in which the South Korean defector center is operated. Experts have also speculated that the restaurant staff may be staying at a different facility from the center.

“They are still in the early stages of establishing themselves in South Korean society and gaining stability,” said a Ministry of Unification official.

By Kim Jin-cheol, staff reporter

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