The North Korean restaurant manager who defected from China with 12 female staff in 2016 has claimed that he was tricked into fleeing to South Korea and later blackmailed by Seoul’s intelligence services.
The claims by Ho Kang-il, made in an interview with Yonhap News Agency, add weight to suggestions that the 13 North Koreans were misled by the National Intelligence Service and that their defection was a propaganda victory for the South just days ahead of the election of Park Geun-hye.
North Korea has consistently claimed that the group was “abducted” from the Chinese port city of Ningbo and has demanded that they be returned to Pyongyang.
“Originally I cooperated with the NIS and provided them with information”, Mr Ho said. “But they lured me, saying that if I came (to the South) with my employees they could get us South Korean citizenship and they would open a restaurant in south-east Asia that could be used as an NIS hide-out.
“They told me I could run the restaurant with the employees”, he said, claiming that the agency later went back on its word.
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“They threatened that unless I went to the South with the staff they would inform the North Korean Embassy that I had been cooperating with the intelligence services”, he said. “I had no choice but to do what they told me to”.
Mr Ho said the 12 women staff believed they were going to work at a restaurant somewhere in south-east Asia and were only told that they were flying to South Korea after they were aboard the aircraft.
A lawyers’ group has accused both the Park government and the administration of her successor, Moon Jae-in, of restricting access to the defectors and raised questions about whether they had genuinely travelled to Seoul on their own free will.
Questions have also been raised by Tomas Ojea Quintana, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, who told a press conference in Seoul last week there needs to be a thorough and independent investigation into the case.
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After meeting several of the women, Mr Quintana said: “There is a need to respect their rights as victims. When I say victims, I am implying that they were subject to some kind of deceit in regard to where they were going”.
The South Korean government responded by stating that none of the 13 had been coerced into travelling to Seoul, although a government official said the women remain under close supervision for their own safety and due to concerns over their families still in North Korea.