North Korea calls mass defection 'kidnapping'
By Choi Sung-jin
The recent defection of 13 people who worked at a North Korean restaurant in China was “unprecedented luring and abducting” and a “grave provocation against this republic,” Pyongyang says.
A spokesman for the North Korean Red Cross Society said Tuesday: “The mass defection, which was manipulated by the puppet regime in the South, is a grave provocation against DPRK (the North’s official title) and an unbearable insult to our people, which can never be tolerated.”
It was the first response from the North’s official organization to the group desertion of 13 North Koreans last Thursday.
The spokesman also indirectly criticized China, saying, “We know in detail how the South Korean agents took the 13 people under the tacit approval of the government involved, and led them to the South through some Southeast Asian countries.”
Noting that the Korean Peninsula is in danger of being embroiled in a war any time because of South Korea’s hostile acts against the North, the spokesman said the abduction of North Koreans in daylight has added fuel to the enragement of North Korean residents.
“The South Korean authorities should apologize for the kidnapping and send our people back,” he said. “Or it must bear in mind a serious consequence and special punishment will follow.”
In response, a unification ministry spokesman said, “The defection was made completely on their own wish, and we sternly warn against the North’s absurd assertion and threat.”
Earlier, a pro-North Korean Internet outlet based in the United States said the defection was a maneuver staged by South Korea’s state spies, aimed at creating a “northern wind” to turn the parliamentary election table to the governing party’s side.
However, a government official said here Monday the mass defection was organized by a man working for the North’s State Security Department, a state spy agency, threatening the status of the agency’s head, Kim Won-hong, known to be the right-hand man of the North’s young leader, Kim Jong-un.