hankyoreh

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

The 13 North Koreans (one manager, 12 waitresses) who were part of a group defection in April from the Ryukyung Restaurant in Ningbo, China, were recently released from the Defector Protection Center (formerly the Joint Interrogation Center) following their interrogation by the National Intelligence Service (NIS), the Hankyoreh confirmed on Aug. 16.

Immediately after the 13 defectors entered South Korea on Apr. 7, the South Korean government made the unusual decision to publicly announce the group defection. There were suspicions that the announcement was the government’s attempt to rally support for the ruling Saenuri Party in the Apr. 13 general election. Even after their interrogation at the NIS’s Defector Protection Center, they were not sent to the Unification Ministry’s Settlement Support Center for North Korean Refugees, better known as Hanawon, as is normal protocol with defectors.

On Tuesday, a Unification Ministry official confirmed that “the defectors have been released into South Korean society” and said that they “do not wish for their identities to be revealed or to be interviewed.”

“Since there are a large number of defectors, they were not all released at once but were discharged from the center last week one at a time. They will not all live together, but they will live in places they have freely chosen,” another official said.

The defectors were released after being confined at the NIS’s Defector Protection Center for about four months. While the NIS and other government investigators can conduct joint interrogation of defectors at the center for a maximum of six months, this happens when defectors are strongly suspected of being spies in disguise. But since the government had already publicly announced that these 13 North Koreans were part of a group defection, there was no reason to carry out the joint investigation for so long.

The government also continued to keep the defectors from having any contact with the outside, leading to allegations that this was intended to prevent the spread of suspicions that Seoul had helped organize the defection.

The NIS refused on two occasions to even give the defectors a copy of the habeas corpus request form submitted by MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society, and it also rejected a request for an interview by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which had launched an investigation into the group defection.

By Kim Jin-cheol, staff reporter

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