North Korean Restaurant Worker Defectors Refuse To Attend Court Hearing
|Here is the latest of the North Korea restaurant worker defector case:
A Seoul court held a hearing Tuesday after a group of lawyers challenged the legitimacy of the South Korean government holding a group of North Korean restaurant workers who defected in April in a state protection facility.
Last month, the Lawyers for a Democratic Society, also referred to as Minbyun, filed a petition with the Seoul Central District Court questioning whether the defectors came to the South out of their own free will, after the country’s top spy agency denied an interview with the defectors.
The defectors themselves did not attend the first hearing at the Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday afternoon, but their legal representatives did. On the same day, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) decided that the 13 North Korean restaurant workers would not be sent to a defector resettlement facility but rather be kept in a protection facility that it operates.
The group of 12 female workers and their male manager who worked at Ryugyong in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, one of Pyongyang’s many overseas restaurants in China, defected to the South in early April. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but I am still suspicious of these progressive lawyers who seem like they are more about representing North Korean interests than the best interests of these defectors.
Those lawyers were hired by a group of pro-North Korea group made up of Korean Americans, out of LA, California. This group went to Pyongyang to obtain the power of attorney from the parents of these defectors. But we all know in reality how that works. It takes North Korean government to allow that group in, and it takes North Korean government approval for that group to meet the families and supposedly get their approval for power of attorney. This Korean American group then hired the Minbyun lawyers in South Korea to supposedly represent the families in North Korea.
So you’re right about your suspicions. This is all a show orchestrated by North Korea pulling the puppet strings.
@Tyson, thanks for the update. None of this is surprising and is a somewhat effective propaganda campaign by the Kim regime.