Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman for the Unification Ministry, said the defections of 13 North Koreans last week were significant enough to be announced because they occurred while the North was being punished with United Nations sanctions.
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South Korea has called the attention of the U.N. Security Council to North Korea’s recent attempts to jam Global Positioning System signals in the South, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
“Rumors about the group’s escape have spread not only through North Korean restaurants in China but also among residents living in the (Sino-North Korean) border area”, a source close to North Korean affairs in China told Daily NK on April 11. They described the escape as “nonsensical” given the unlikelihood of all 13 agreeing to leave their parents and relatives behind in the North and cited that in itself as being “evidence of the group being tricked into the escape”, according to the source.
Life expectancy in the North is only 86 percent that of the South, 2013. He had worked in the secretive General Reconnaissance Bureau, which is focused on espionage activities against the South. Bureau 121 has itself been responsible for hack attacks on several South Korean media outlets, government institutions and banks, and is believed by USA officials to have been behind the 2014 attack on Sony Pictures.
In an interview with The Diplomat Magazine a year ago, Hyeonseo Lee-a well-known North Korean defector and author of a book about her defection-said that in the decade she lived in China after fleeing North Korea (before defecting to South Korea in 2008) she would “constantly wake up in fear of being captured by the Chinese police and send back to a prison camp in North Korea”.
The economy remained the top concern for South Koreans who voted, and the strong turnout for the main opposition Minjoo Party could make it harder for Park and ruling conservatives to push for economic deregulation.
Tensions between Washington and Pyongyang escalated following the North’s fourth nuclear test in January and an alleged satellite launch the next month.
The South Korean government has made the case that these defections are a sign that the economic sanctions imposed in the wake of North Korean weapons testing are working, and that people are voting with their feet. The officials said they confirmed the two individual defections in response to news reports on them. According to the newscaster, the reasons for the colonel’s defection are, at present, “not known”.
On Friday, Seoul disclosed that 13 North Korean workers had defected to the South from an unnamed country.
An important part of North Korea’s revenue comes from employees who work overseas and operate businesses such as restaurants across countries such as China.
“What needs to be stressed is that these people had valid identity documents and legally came to the country, not North Koreans who have entered illegally”.
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In the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai near Macau, a North Korean restaurant had also closed despite the fact it had been popular with clients.
