hankyoreh

13 North Korean workers (one man and 12 women) at an overseas restaurants who entered South Korea on Apr. 7

The group of 13 North Koreans who defected from a North Korean restaurant and reached South Korea with unusual speed in early April had purchased tickets to Malaysia using 60,000 RMB (US$8,980) they had received from an agent of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), according to a source who spoke with the Hankyoreh.

The defectors were instructed by this agent, whom they met while working for more than four years at North Korean restaurants, that they could defect by first traveling to another country.

“The 13 defectors were able to escape with the help of a South Korean to whom they had been introduced by a Korean-Chinese they had gotten to know while working at a restaurant in Yanji, China,” a source who is knowledgeable about the group defection told the Hankyoreh on Sept. 2.

“They purchased tickets for their flight from Shanghai to Malaysia with 60,000 RMB that this individual gave them. This person, who was an NIS agent, told them that they could escape by way of another country. They say that this person also frequently visited the NIS’s North Korean Defector Protection Center.”

The defectors had worked at a restaurant in the city of Yanji, Jilin Province, three years before they began working at the North Korean restaurant in Ningbo, a city in China’s Zhejiang Province. The source explained that a Chinese individual of Korean descent whom they had gotten to know during this time introduced them to an NIS agent who helped in a number of ways with their defection.

The defectors’ passage through Malaysia also occurred very quickly. “The group of defectors landed at the airport in Malaysia and then entered the South Korean Embassy. The very same day, they headed to the airport, reportedly under an escort of 30 or so people who appeared to be Malaysian special forces. I’ve heard that their South Korean passports had been prepared and that they boarded the plane at the airport without going through customs,” the source said.

While defectors normally have to stay in another country for two or three months before reaching South Korea, this group of defectors was able to enter South Korea in just two days, which is unusually fast.

The South Korean government also broke with precedent by announcing the defectors’ arrival in an emergency press briefing just one day later – and just five days before the general election on April 13.

The 13 defectors expressed their discomfort with the fact that the South Korean government had announced their arrival in the country.

“I didn’t know they were going to announce our arrival,” said the manager of the North Korean restaurant, 36, in a recent telephone interview with the Hankyoreh.

“I understand that [the announcement] had to do with politics by the higher-ups. Our defection was unrelated to sanctions [against North Korea], but you can’t get away from politics, whether in South Korea or North Korea,” the manager said.

The NIS repeatedly said that MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society, a group that had asked for an interview to ensure that the human rights of the female defectors were being respected, were “North Korean sympathizers” and “bad people,” sources said.

“I thought that MINBYUN were North Korean sympathizers and bad people. The female defectors think that if they meet MINBYUN their parents [in North Korea] will be killed because of association with them,” the manager said.

The Seoul human rights branch of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights finally met with the female defectors at the Protection Center on Aug. 18. The office’s request to have an interview with the female defectors had been rebuffed on several occasions since June.

“What I heard is that the interview was very brief and that the UN was only able to unofficially confirm the defectors’ identities, without asking questions about whether they had been kidnapped or had defected,” one source said.

By Kim Jin-cheol, staff reporter

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