Staying on the reclusive regime,
South Korea’s intelligence agency says that more North Koreans working in foreign embassies have been defecting to the South since the COVID-19 pandemic slowed down.
This follows a civic group’s recent claim that more than a dozen North Korean defectors have been arrested and detained in China.
Our foreign affairs correspondent Bae Eun-ji reports.
Several people cross a shallow river, in darkness.
This is video footage released by a South Korean-based civic group, saying they’re North Korean defectors who were trying to flee to South Korea, but were arrested by Chinese police.
The group said 15 North Korean defectors, 13 women and two children, were arrested in Kunming in southern China,.. which shares a border with South Asian countries.
They were trying to take a speedboat to cross into a Southeast Asian country, then onward to South Korea, but were arrested as they were preparing to board.
They will likely be repatriated, a fate that awaits nearly all North Korean escapees in Chinese police custody, and will likely be severely punished once they return to the North.
The South Korean government said it’s currently verifying the civic group’s claim, while reiterating that North Korean defectors should not be forcibly sent back.
“Our position is that under no circumstances, should North Korean defectors residing abroad be forcibly repatriated against their will.”
Separately, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said Wednesday that since the COVID-19 pandemic started to slow down in the second half of last year, there has been an increase in the number of North Korean defectors, who used to work in foreign embassies or as foreign currency workers.
But the agency noted that the number is less than the figure recorded when former leader Kim Jong-il led the regime.
It also said an increase in this number is not necessarily a sign of instability in Kim Jong-un’s regime, but added that it’s closely monitoring these changes.
In fact, in November, a senior North Korean diplomat based in Cuba defected with his wife and child to South Korea,.. and the Korean government has been saying the number of “elite” North Koreans with professional jobs escaping to the South has steadily increased in recent years.
Bae Eun-ji, Arirang News.
source : https://www.arirang.com/news/view?id=275329
