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Court rejects request to interrogate overseas restaurant defectors

By KH디지털2

Published : Feb. 23, 2017 - 14:58

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A Seoul court on Thursday rejected a request to question North Koreans who defected to the South while working at a restaurant in China last year.

The Seoul Administrative Court turned down the request sought by the Lawyers for a Democratic Society to call the defectors as witnesses in a case it filed to nullify the decision by the National Intelligence Service that banned its lawyers from talking to those that arrived in the South.

In this file photo taken on April 11, 2016, an employee of a North Korean restaurant in the eastern Chinese city of Yanji tries to stop the camera crew from filming the site. This restaurant, located in the Yanbian autonomous prefecture with a large population of ethnic Koreans, is believed to have been the initial workplace of 13 North Koreans who defected to the South together the previous week. (Yonhap)

After the group of 13 North Koreans fled to the South en masse in April last year, the lawyers asked the spy agency six times to allow them access to the defectors. The NIS, however, rejected the request, saying the defectors do not want to have a meeting with them.

The NIS had protected the defectors without sending them to a state-run resettlement facility, saying that the case was a very high-profile defection and Pyongyang was using it as propaganda tool.

Usually, North Korean defectors receive three months of resettlement education at the Hanawon facility after coming to South Korea.

The lawyers claimed that the defectors should be brought to court to testify whether it was their will not to have a meeting with them.

The court, however, said it is a matter to be proved by the NIS.

The spy agency has argued that there is no point in carrying out the suit as the defectors are no longer under its protection and have resettled in South Korea since August.

The court will hold a verdict hearing on March 23.

A total of 1,414 North Koreans came to South Korea last year, compared with 1,275 tallied for 2015, according to a preliminary data provided by the Ministry of Unification.

The total number of North Korean defectors in South Korea reached 30,208 as of end-December. (Yonhap)

Court rejects request to interrogate overseas restaurant defectors

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