BRUSSELS (Yonhap) -- South Korea's top envoy to the European Union has pressed North Korea to immediately free the wife and two daughters of a South Korean activist and compensate them for their detention.
The North last month reported the wife had died and the daughters wanted nothing to do with their father.
Kim Chang-beom, the South Korean ambassador, also proposed that the European Parliament and the international community cooperate closely to try to improve North Korea's dismal human rights record.
His comments came a day after a Seoul-based rights advocacy group announced a U.N. document that demanded Pyongyang immediately release Shin Suk-ja and her two daughters.
The three women have reportedly been held since 1987, a year after Shin's husband, Oh Kil-nam, fled the North, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said at its session on May 2, according to the International Coalition to Stop Crimes against Humanity in North Korea, a Seoul-based rights advocacy group.
Oh has said his family was lured to the North in 1985 via West Germany where he was studying economics.
In April, a senior North Korean diplomat told the U.N. group Shin had died of hepatitis and Oh's two daughters do not regard him as their father since "he abandoned his family and drove their mother to death."
Ri Jang-gon, deputy permanent representative for North Korea at the United Nations in Geneva, also claimed the daughters "strongly refused to deal with Oh and asked not to bother themselves anymore."
In a video message to the subcommittee session, Oh pleaded for the European Parliament's help to repatriate his family from North Korea.
The session was attended by about 70 people, including members of the European Parliament and Robert King, U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues.
The session came five days after the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling on China to stop deporting North Korean refugees back to the North.
Tens of thousands of North Korean defectors are believed to be hiding in China, hoping to travel to Thailand or other Southeast Asian countries before resettling in South Korea, home to more than 23,500 North Korean defectors.
China does not recognize North Korean refugees and repatriates them back to their homeland, where they face harsh punishment including execution, according to defectors and activists.