Sun Mu was a propaganda artist before escaping. Today, he uses his work as a voice for the North Korean people. pic.twitter.com/iMKnnKlc1f
— Liberty in North Korea (@LibertyinNK) May 4, 2016
This drug bust sure isn’t going to help the already poor image that many South Koreans hold of North Korean defectors living in South Korea. Of interest is that apparently much of the meth was used by other North Korean defectors which is an indication of the large drug problem in North Korea that has been reported on before. Just think after unification South Korea will have to deal with an entire country that could be hooked on drugs:
A group of more than 20 North Korean defectors and ethnic Korean-Chinese people have been indicted here on charges of smuggling methamphetamine believed to be produced in the North into South Korea for sale or personal consumption, South Korean prosecutors said on Sunday, noting they have found circumstantial evidence of North Korean residents’ involvement in the crime.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said it has indicted a total of 23 suspects, including North Korean defectors living here and ethnic Koreans in China, with or without detention for smuggling the illegal drug into South Korea and seized about 810.7 grams of meth, or 27,000 doses. Meth, which can trigger side effects such as paranoia, hallucinations, delirium and delusions, is banned in South Korea.
All told, 16 North Korean defectors were referred to trial. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link.
This is an interesting development in the defector restaurant worker issue. The North Koreans are willing to send the families of the defectors to Seoul. I would assume that not all of their families would go and the ones sent would be risking the death of the families members staying behind if they too defected. I would also think these family members would be under strict instructions to try and convince the defectors to come back to North Korea. The ROK authorities probably understand this and this is why they denied North Korea’s request:
North Korea has notified Seoul of its plans to send family members of the restaurant workers who defected earlier in the month to South Korea, the country’s state-run news agency said Friday.
A group of 13 North Korean people defected from the same Pyongyang-run restaurant in China and came to South Korea in early April in what has become a steady stream of people leaving the isolated country.
North Korea has consistently claimed South Korea abducted the workers and demanded that they be returned to their loved ones at once. Pyongyang also threatened to take strong action against the South if its demands are not met.
“The families of the abductees are eagerly asking for face-to-face contact with their daughters as they were forced to part from their beloved daughters,” said the notification sent to South Korea by Ri Chung-bok, chairman of North Korea’s Red Cross.
The notification was carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency.
“At their earnest requests, our side again seriously notifies your side of our decision to send them to Seoul via Panmunjom (a truce village),” it showed.
South Korea should not conceal the unethical crime under the pretext of “international practice,” but should take “immediate technical measures” for the families to reunite with the defectors, the letter said.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry refused the demand, however, saying in a press release after the report that “The latest group defection by the workers at a overseas North Korean restaurant was completely of their own free will.”
A ministry official also said the South Korean government has not received any official notification letter from North Korea on the matter of sending the family members of the defectors to Seoul. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
The Kim regime must be pretty embarrassed by the recent mass defection of 13 overseas restaurant workers because they are continuing to make the claim that they were all kidnapped:
In the video, the North Koreans are seen demanding the immediate repatriation of the defectors.
The defections are being labeled as an operation of the “treasonous clique of [South Korean President] Park Geun-hye,” and the two videos feature various North Koreans: restaurant workers, a student and a party cadre.
One interviewee condemned the South Korean puppets for “kidnapping our people 10 at a time,” adding “the [South Korean] presidential Blue House, the devil’s lair, should be destroyed and our people delivered as soon as possible.”
On April 7, North Koreans – a man and 12 women – had arrived in the South after they sought asylum at Seoul’s embassy in Bangkok.
North Korea has slammed Seoul, claiming South Korea “dragged” the North Koreans to a “Southeast Asian country.” [UPI]
You can read more at the link.
This undated photo shows a passport and Chinese documents held by one of the 13 North Korean restaurant workers stationed in China who participated in a successful group defection to South Korea last week. The photo, taken and kept by the restaurant operator, shows that the passport is marked as being for official use, as is commonly issued to North Koreans sent abroad to work. The document shows a foreigner’s registration of resident address in China. China’s foreign ministry had said that the defectors left the country carrying valid passports. (Yonhap)
Considering that this defection did happen a year ago it does seem like a legitimate question to ask if this had any political motivations:
A North Korean military intelligence officer has defected to South Korea, the South’s Unification Ministry announced on Monday. While declining to give details, ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee confirmed the man is a colonel and called the defection “meaningful.” He is believed to be one of the highest-ranking North Koreans to defect to the South.
Jeong said the defection could be read as a sign of fissure at the top levels of North Korea’s regime.
The announcement comes just days after South Korea said that 13 North Koreans who worked at a state-run restaurant defected en masse last week. Chinese officials confirmed Monday that the North Koreans were working in China, that they left China April 6 and that they were North Korean passport holders.
It is unclear when the high-ranking military official defected to the South. Defectors are often questioned and debriefed for months before news of their defections is publicly announced. In this case, South Korean news wire Yonhap reports the official defected sometime last year, which immediately sparked criticism that the government’s announcement is politically motivated: South Koreans go to the polls in parliamentary elections this week, and previous governments have similarly been accused of trying to influence elections with conveniently-timed announcements. [NPR]
You can read more at the link.
North Korea calls defection of 13 North Koreans from China an "unprecedented kidnapping incident" https://t.co/ShDR2iPJuc
— Elizabeth Shim (@GlobalAsianista) April 12, 2016
I guess we will see if the mass defection of 13 overseas workers from a North Korean restaurant will become a trend or not. I would think the regime after this defection would really tighten the controls on their overseas workers by threatening their families back in North Korea:
Future mass defection by North Koreans working abroad cannot be ruled out following the recent escape of 13 people, South Korea’s unification ministry said Sunday.
Speaking to reporters, a ministry official explained that considerable pressure to send back hard currency to Pyongyang in the face of tough United Nations sanctions played a part in the restaurant workers’ defection.
The government hinted earlier that the defectors were fearful that they would be punished if they were unable to send back money to North Korea. Many restaurants have been forced to close due to a drop in patrons, with estimates placing roughly half of them unable to send money back to the North.
The official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said one restaurant serving staff testified that with tough sanctions taking hold, people felt there was no hope for the North Korean regime.
He said a second worker confirmed she watched South Korean TV dramas and knew about life in the South, while another said she realized what happiness was really like while living abroad, and did not want to go back to the North.
“They expressed a desire to live their lives as South Koreans and believed the joint action was their last chance to get away from the North,” the official said. He added the defectors had Internet connection to the outside world, which is not possible inside their isolationist homeland.
“Such information (about the world at large) caused them to crave freedom,” the official claimed. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
This is actually pretty amazing that an entire restaurant staff would defect because the selection process for the job is relatively stringent so it isn’t like the workers are coming from desperately poor families in North Korea. It is also pretty impressive that the entire staff was able to coordinate with each other to do this without fear of one of them informing on them back to regime minders:
Thirteen North Koreans working in a state-run restaurant outside the country have defected to South Korea, a government official in Seoul said Friday.
The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around $10 million every year from some 130 restaurants it operates — with mostly North Korean staff — in 12 countries, including neighbouring China.
Last month, while unveiling a series of unilateral sanctions on Pyongyang over its January nuclear test, Seoul had urged South Korean citizens overseas to boycott any such establishments, saying their profits funded the North’s nuclear weapons programme.
The defectors, one male manager and a dozen women, arrived in the South on Thursday, Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee told reporters.
He declined to identify the country where the restaurant they had been working in was located.
There have been defections by individual restaurant workers in the past, but this is the first time so many staff from one restaurant have defected en masse.
Jeong quoted one of the defectors as saying that everyone had been “on the same page” about escaping to South Korea. [AFP]
You can read more at the link.
With prices to pay brokers to assist people defecting from North Korea skyrocketing due to the border crackdown during the Kim Jong-un era; it only makes sense that defector families already in South Korea would have to pool their meager resources to get the rest of their family members out:
First came Kim Yong-shil, in 2006. Then her husband, her two grown daughters, her teenaged son. Two years later, out came her mother, then one brother, then in 2012, the other.
One by one over the past decade, the members of this family have escaped from North Korea, the ones who made it out first earning money and meeting brokers so they could bring out the others.
This process — called “chain defection” — is almost the only way to escape from North Korea now, as security along the border has tightened dramatically since Kim Jong Un took control of the state four years ago.
In the past 20 years, some 29,000 North Koreans have fled hunger and repression at home by escaping across the river that forms the country’s border with China. The flow of refugees had been tracking steadily upward until plummeting during Kim’s first year in power. By last year, fewer than 1,300 people had escaped, less than half of the peak recorded in 2009. [Washington Post]
You can read much more at the link.
