[If true, the revelation would support North Korea’s longstanding accusation that the South Korean spy agency had kidnapped its citizens. It would also further taint the reputation of the spy agency, which has long been accused of meddling in domestic politics and fabricating espionage cases in the name of fighting the communist North.]
By Choe Sang-Hun
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A North Korean-run
restaurant in Beijing in 2016. That same year, South Korea said
12 North Korean waitresses had defected from a
similar restaurant in China,
but many details of the
journey remained a mystery.
CreditNg Han
Guan/Associated Press
|
SEOUL, South Korea — It was the most sensational defection
by North Koreans in years: In April 2016, South Korea announced that 12 young
waitresses and their male manager, all members of North Korea’s elite, deserted
their government-run restaurant in China and fled to the South.
Now, in a tale with echoes of a spy thriller, the manager
and three of the women claim that the waitresses did not even know they were
going to South Korea when the manager took them out of China at the behest of
the South’s National Intelligence Service.
“It was luring and kidnapping, and I know because I took the
lead,” said the manager, Heo Kang-il, during an interview on the South Korean
cable channel JTBC on Thursday night.
If true, the revelation would support North Korea’s
longstanding accusation that the South Korean spy agency had kidnapped its
citizens. It would also further taint the reputation of the spy agency, which
has long been accused of meddling in domestic politics and fabricating
espionage cases in the name of fighting the communist North.
“I want to go home because living like this is not the life
I wanted,” said one of the three women, who were all interviewed by JTBC. “I
miss my parents.”
JTBC did not reveal the names of the three women and also
blurred their faces, as well as Mr. Heo’s, to protect their identities. But it
showed what it said were copies of the 12 women’s North Korean passports, as
well as their flight reservations when they left China.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry is checking “the new
allegations,” its spokesman, Baik Tae-hyun, said on Friday.
But Mr. Baik admitted that when his ministry announced in
2016 that the women had arrived in South Korea of their own free will, it was
just relaying information it received from the intelligence agency.
The National Intelligence Service said it was “closely
reviewing” the JTBC report. Until now, the agency has dismissed as North Korean
propaganda allegations that the women were taken to the South against their
will.
The case of the 12 women, all in their 20s or 30s, presents
a thorny problem for President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, who held a summit
meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, last month to discuss improving
ties. Mr. Kim’s government has long demanded the women’s repatriation. But the
South has always denied abducting North Koreans, saying that more than 30,000 North
Koreans who have arrived in the South since the 1990s were defectors.
The women were among tens of thousands of North Koreans
working abroad who funnel badly needed foreign currency to their government.
The North selects loyal and relatively affluent citizens to send abroad as
workers, and the defection of the 12 women was a major coup for Park Geun-hye,
who was South Korea’s president at the time and whose conservative government
cited it as a sign of disillusionment with Mr. Kim among North Korean elites.
But many details of the defection remained a mystery and
fueled suspicion, including how the restaurant workers managed to plot their
escape despite being trained to spy on one another for signs of disloyalty.
They also arrived in South Korea only two days after they fled their restaurant
in the Chinese city of Ningbo, in the eastern province of Zhejiang. Other
defectors usually took months to complete the trip to South Korea, often
trekking through the jungles of Southeast Asia with the help of human
traffickers.
Ms. Park’s government also took the highly unusual step of
announcing their defection the day after their arrival. But it kept their
whereabouts secret and blocked human rights lawyers from meeting with them. It
also denied the North’s claim that the waitresses’ manager had conspired with
the South Korean spy agency to take them to the South after telling them that
they were being relocated to a restaurant in Southeast Asia.
But Mr. Heo says that was exactly what happened. Like other
North Korean workers abroad, the women were trained to obey their manager, who
held their passports.
“I just told them that we were moving to a new place,” he
told JTBC.
Mr. Heo said he decided to spy for the National Intelligence
Service in 2014 after Kim Jong-un executed his own uncle, Jang Song-thaek, on
sedition and corruption charges. Mr. Heo said he became disillusioned with Mr.
Kim after five of his former classmates were executed in a purge of officials
close to Mr. Jang.
Mr. Heo said he met a South Korean agent in a motel in
China, signed a letter of allegiance, and had his picture taken with a South
Korean flag as proof that he would not betray the agency.
But his spying was exposed in 2016, and when he asked his
contact at the National Intelligence Service to help him defect, the official ordered
him to bring the women with him. Mr. Heo said he was promised big rewards, like
a medal and a government job.
“He said this was an operation approved by President Park
and everyone was waiting for me,” Mr. Heo said of his contact at the
intelligence agency. “He threatened that if I did not bring the women with me,
he would report me to the North Korean Embassy.”
The three women interviewed by JTBC said they “never
imagined” they were being taken to South Korea.
Only when they landed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Mr. Heo
took them to the South Korean embassy by taxi did they realize that something
had gone wrong, they said.
When they balked at entering, they said Mr. Heo threatened
to tell the North Korean authorities that they often watched South Korean
movies in China, a serious crime for North Korean workers abroad.
“I blackmailed them and told them to make a choice: ‘If you
return home, you die, and if you follow me, you live,’” Mr. Heo said. “I am now
remorseful for what I did.”
Inside the embassy, the women signed statements that they
were defecting of their own free will.
They said working in China had been their dream because they
could earn in a month what they made in a year in North Korea. It was also
their only chance to travel outside their isolated, impoverished country.
Now in South Korea against their will but unable to return
home, they said that they have struggled to adjust, attending schools, working
part-time jobs and learning to speak with a South Korean accent. They said they
hid their identities and refused until now to reveal their ordeal to avoid
harming their parents in the North, where families of defectors are often
treated as traitors.
“It has been so hard for me because I wanted to tell my
parents that I am O.K., but I can’t,” one woman said.
Mr. Heo said he decided to speak out because President Park
was impeached after he defected and the intelligence agency never gave him the
rewards it had promised. He said he also realized, after arriving in the South,
that the timing of the group’s defection was moved up more than a month to help
rally conservative votes in parliamentary elections.
“They had me believe that this was a big patriotic
operation,” he said. “But they used me and then shot me in the back.”
