The North, in a message relayed by its Red Cross chief to a counterpart in the South, accused South Korean authorities of trying to coerce the five into defecting, calling it “a cowardly act of crime against humanity”.
Advertisement
“The North demanded that all five be returned”, the ministry said, according to The New York Times.
The film is slated to show in Asian territories including Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines and Myanmar. We hope that Lee’s visit will motivate North Korea to change its attitude and move toward more inter-governmental dialogue and diverse private-sector exchange and cooperation. It has so far earned about $22 million.
Despite tensions, the two Koreas have a practice of repatriating civilians who accidentally land in each other’s territory.
Cha Du-hyon, a visiting scholar with the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification, told RFA that only a mass defection of high-ranking officials now in power could be seen as a factor in destabilizing the regime, rather than one by officials with ties to a fading power base. North Korean agents are believed to have assassinated one South Korean human rights activist, and attempted to assassinate at least three others in China and South Korea, using syringes disguised as pens, and loaded with a powerful toxin, neostigmine bromide.
In South Korea, homosexuality is criminalized only among soldiers, not civilians.
The North usually sends home South Korean fishermen rescued in its waters, although some have been held there, apparently against their will.
Filed by Kim-Jho Gwang-soo, a film director and LGBT activist and Kim Seung-hwan, a head of the Rainbow Factory production company, the lawsuit is the first of its kind to be filed in Korea.
Food safety is a particular concern for Kim Jong Un and the farm only employs young, single North Koreans in their twenties of good class standing.
Advertisement
Only two days earlier, the 93-year-old’s representatives had finalized the trip in an attempt to improve inter-Korean ties – Lee’s late husband Kim Dae-jung famously became the first South Korean president to hold a summit with a North Korean leader in 2000.
