КОРЕЯ - СТРАНА ЧУЧХЕ

Ministry of Unification spokesperson Jeong Joon-hee speaks during a briefing on the topic of the group defection from a North Korean restaurant in China, at the government complex in Sejong, Apr. 8. (Yonhap News)

NIS is putting waitresses from restaurant in China isolated, and has refused requests to allow them to be interviewed
The UN is reportedly moving ahead with its investigation into a recent group defection of staff from a North Korean restaurant in China.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is planning to send officials to visit Pyongyang as early as the end of this month in order to interview family members of the North Korean defectors, sources say.

Following reports that the South Korean government has repeatedly refused to allow the OHCHR to meet with the defectors themselves, there are growing suspicions about why the government is keeping the defectors from any outside contact.

After interviews with government officials and multiple sources connected with NGOs and North Korea on July 7, the Hankyoreh learned that the OHCHR has been trying to arrange meetings with the defectors and their families as part of a closed investigation.

"Officials from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have arranged to visit Pyongyang at the end of this month or the beginning of next to interview the family members who claim that the defectors were ‘lured and kidnapped,’” said a source who is familiar with affairs at the UN.

This appears to be in response to a written request for assistance that the defectors’ parents in North Korea sent this past April to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the president of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

With North Korea expected to raise the issue of the group defection during the UN General Assembly, which will start in September, there is speculation that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights may address the issue as well, given the preliminary investigation that is underway.

The OHCHR has also asked the South Korean government on several occasions since June to arrange a meeting with the North Korean defectors, but the government has turned down these requests, the Hankyoreh confirmed.

"A senior official at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Office in Seoul asked the government to allow them to meet with the defectors from the North Korean restaurant, but those requests were denied,” said a source with a North Korean human rights advocacy group, on condition of anonymity.

"The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights requested an interview, but we refused this request after hearing from the relevant ministry that the defectors in question did not want an interview,” said a senior official with South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The National Intelligence Service declined to confirm the facts in question and told a reporter to contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for confirmation.

The UN North Korean Human Rights Office, which is affiliated with the OHCHR, opened in Seoul in June 2015. Since the office is in charge of monitoring North Korean human rights issues, the South Korean government has allowed UN officials to visit the Settlement Support Center for North Korean Refugees (called Hanawon) and interview defectors since February.

But the director of the NIS broke with precedent by deciding not to send this group of defectors to Hanawon. Instead, the defectors have been staying for three months at a North Korean Defectors Protection Center (formerly a joint interrogation center) that is managed by the NIS. This is why the North Korean Human Rights Office asked the government for an interview with the defectors.

By Kim Jin-cheol, staff reporter