The announcement by Seoul’s Unification Ministry Tuesday came after South Korean media reported two to three employees at a North Korean-run restaurant in China fled and went to an unidentified Southeast Asian country earlier this month.
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But an intelligence source said that information “lacked credibility”.
A flurry of elite North Korean defections could have taken place not long after the Seventh Party Congress – this time involving three waitresses at a state-run restaurant near Shanghai.
Seoul called for North Korea’s showing of its stance on denuclearisation before making any dialogue overtures, making it clear that Pyongyang should show its will on denuclearisation through actions if the country really wants peace and stability on the peninsula.
In its proposal sent to “military authorities” in Seoul, Pyongyang said: “We propose to hold working-level contact for opening the north-south military authorities’ talks at the date and place both sides deem convenient in late May or early June in order to defuse the military tension on the Korean peninsula and create confidence-building atmosphere between the military authorities of the north and the south”.
A North Korean restaurant in Shanghai.
If Jang’s account is accurate, this would indicate that the news of the April defection of 13 workers had been circulated among North Korean workers overseas, who experts say are subject to labor exploitation by the cash-hungry Communist regime.
A South Korean official said nothing has been confirmed yet, but that government protocol is not to confirm defections unless asylum-seekers have landed in the country.
Pyongyang, meanwhile, has claimed that South Korea kidnapped the group of North Koreans who defected to Seoul last month.
Such restaurants are known to be facing financial difficulties after the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) slapped tougher sanctions on Pyongyang for its January nuclear test and long-range rocket launch in February.
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North Korea has adopted a different strategy on defectors under leader Kim Jong Un, displaying those who later defect back to the North on state television and bringing the families of others to Panmunjom on the border between the two states.
