The deportation of two North Korean defectors by the Moon administration is getting really interesting. Now it is being alleged that they did not murder 16 people and instead it was an accusation made by North Korea that the Moon administration accepted in order to repatriate them:
The Ministry of Unification has raised doubts over murder accusations brought up against two North Korean fishermen who were deported against their will three years ago based on that claim.
Korea Times
A high-ranking official told reporters Thursday that no one other than the judiciary “has the authority to decide whether they are brutal criminals.” The latest move by the ministry is a de facto retraction of the claims it made over the fishermen during the previous Moon Jae-in administration.
Authorities under the Moon administration accused the fishermen of conspiring with a third man to kill their captain and 15 others on a boat before their escape to the South on Nov. 2, 2019. After a three-day investigation, South Korean authorities sent the fishermen back to the North on Nov. 7, claiming that they confessed to the murders.
The high-ranking official said the truth will be uncovered through the prosecution’s ongoing investigation. But he refused to comment further on questions including whether the ministry can disclose information about the 2019 investigation.
The same day, a government official familiar with the matter also questioned the credibility of the murder allegation, claiming that their confessions were factually inconsistent on simple points such as how many people were on the boat and how they killed them. Munhwa Ilbo, a daily newspaper, reported that they were forced to make those confessions through “cruel treatment.”
Citing intelligence reports, the official said the fishermen were executed within several days after being sent back to North Korea.
Rep. Han Ki-ho, head of the ruling People Power Party’s team investigating misconduct involving North Korea during the Moon administration, claimed Wednesday that the murder allegations were an outright lie.
Citing a source living in North Korea’s northeastern city of Kimchaek, Han said the fishermen were brokers who had tried to help 16 people from five households escape to South Korea.
“The two were set to guide the 16 people to South Korea on a fishing vessel, but fled when they realized they were being arrested,” Han said during a meeting at the National Assembly in Seoul.
Han claimed that the North Korean regime fabricated the story and lied to the Moon administration in an attempt to have the fishermen repatriated. He believes South Korean authorities probably knew what really happened, but went ahead with the deportation.
This is not the first time that North has made false accusations of crime against someone to gain what it wants. Rep. Tae Yong-ho, former deputy ambassador of North Korea to Britain, was also falsely accused as a child rapist by the North after defecting to the South in 2016, said Rep. Kweon Seong-dong, the party’s interim head.
“North Korea’s unilateral claims were accepted as fact without verification,” Kweon said during a speech at the Assembly. “The Park Geun-hye administration did not trust such claims by the North. As a result, we have the lawmaker, Tae Yong-ho, at the National Assembly.”
You can read more at the link, but it seems totally foolish to accept the word of the North Koreans on anything relating to defectors. If this allegation is in fact true, I am not sure if anything legally can be done about it, but the people involved in this decision need to be at least publicly brought to light.
I kind of agree with the Moon administration on this one, these two defectors admitted to murdering 16 people and this is not the type of people South Koreans should want in their country:
The office of President Yoon Suk-yeol immediately struck back at former Foreign Minister and National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong on Sunday after he defended the previous administration’s 2019 repatriation of two North Korean fishermen against their will.
Chung said earlier Sunday the then government of President Moon Jae-in determined the North Koreans’ expression of a desire to defect as insincere and decided to deport them, as they had confessed to killing 16 fellow crew members.
Chung also said the North Koreans “were rare, grotesque killers.”
“Some claim that we had to accept them into our society as defectors in accordance with our Constitution,” he said in a statement. “However, our domestic law stipulates that nonpolitical criminals, like them, should be deported without being allowed into the country. Nonpolitical serious criminals are also not considered refugees under international law.”
Just hours later, Choi Young-bum, senior presidential secretary for press affairs, hit back at Chung.
“What officials of the previous administration and the opposition party should do is not to engage in a political offensive, but to cooperate faithfully with the investigation,” Choi said.
Choi also criticized Chung for portraying the North Koreans as “grotesque killers,” accusing him of making such a characterization without a proper investigation of them.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
This is either a motivated defector or an attempted infiltration:
South Korea’s military is scrutinizing how a presumed North Korean defector managed to get through a seaside drain and into the country early Tuesday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The man, intercepted at 7:20 a.m. by South Korean troops inside the civilian control line just south of the Demilitarized Zone, apparently swam some part of the way from North Korea in a dive suit before passing through a drain south of the border, according to a translated, text-message update from the joint chiefs Wednesday.
“The person is assumed to have gone up a beach in the vicinity of the Unification Observatory,” south of an observation post, wearing the dive suit and fins, “and then passed through a drain under iron fences along the coast,” the message said.
The incident occurred in the northeastern Gangwon province, a joint chiefs spokesman said. The site description matches the Goseong Unification Observatory near the DMZ on South Korea’s eastern coast. Another defector crossed there in early November.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but reportedly the South Korean military unit did not take appropriate action when security cameras spotted the defector.
If true this would go down as a unique defection:
In the annals of great escapes, vaulting the barbed wire, heavily-surveilled fence that separates the mined no-man’s land between North and South Korea would surely feature strongly.
According to the South Korean media this week, a defector who evaded security in one of the most dangerous border crossings of the world on November 3 was a former gymnast who managed to swing himself over the imposing barricades, reportedly without triggering key sensors.
The authorities vowed to investigate why high-tech security systems did not work. “We will look into why the sensors did not ring and make sure they operate properly,” an official told Yonhap news agency.
The man, reported to be wearing blue civilian clothes and in his twenties, later surrendered after a manhunt by the South Korean military units who discovered a breach of the fence. He was detained without incident just under a mile south of the fence and has asked for asylum.
The Telegraph
You can read more at the link.
There is an interesting interview in the Korea Times with one of the North Korean restaurant workers that defected to South Korea back in 2016 I recommend everyone read:
The big question that so many have been asking: Did everyone want to escape?
Korea Times
A: It seems like a clear question, but the answer isn’t clear. Not all employees working at the Chinese restaurant wanted to come to South Korea.
The context is that the work in China was tougher than we had expected. We had good situations in North Korea, so we were often openly wondering why we were working so hard; it was not as golden as it had been presented to us in North Korea. Therefore, most of us agreed to seek better working conditions in a different country.
We were not ignorant about the outside world. When I was in North Korea, I certainly knew about the possibility of escaping to South Korea, and from what I knew about the others, they did too. But we all had good lives in North Korea; why should we go to South Korea?
In discussing seeking better working conditions, about six or seven employees left. That group took taxis to the North Korean embassy to make it clear they were not participating in an escape.
You can read the rest of the interview at the link, but I also found it very interesting that she never met the Minbyun lawyers that were claiming that the North Koreans were kidnapped and wanted to go back.
This is the most bizarre North Korean defector story I have read. This could be dramatized into a movie plot:
South Korea deported two North Koreans back to the communist nation after learning that they killed 16 fellow crew members on their fishing boat and fled to the South, the unification ministry said Thursday.
The two in their 20s were sent back to the North at around 3:10 p.m. through the truce village of Panmunjom, five days after they were captured near the Northern Limit Line sea border in the East Sea on Saturday, according to the ministry.
It marks the South’s first deportation of North Koreans through Panmunjom.
“We decided to deport them after determining that accepting them to our society could pose a threat to the lives and safety of our people and that such criminals cannot be recognized as refugees under international law,” Lee Sang-min, the ministry’s spokesperson, said at a press briefing.
The government also plans to send back the fishing boat of the North Koreans, a ministry official said.
Officials said that it took a couple of days for the South’s Navy to seize the North Koreans as they attempted to run away after crossing into the South.
During an investigation, the North Koreans confessed that they and another crew member first killed the captain of the fishing boat in late October out of anger over his harsh treatment before killing the other protesting crew members one by one later, according to officials.
They were also quoted as saying that all the bodies were dumped overboard.
They initially intended to return to North Korea and seek shelter. When the boat arrived at a North Korean port on its east coast, however, one was captured by local police, causing the other two to get scared and flee, the official said.
Yonhap
