S. Koreans expected better life in N. Korea
Print Edition
Some of the six South Koreans sent home from North Korea had entered the state in search of a better life, a report said yesterday.
The six were taken into custody for questioning after being handed over last Friday — along with the body of a woman — at the border truce village of Panmunjom.
One of the six was the woman’s husband, who had strangled her in an aborted suicide pact, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted public safety authorities as saying.
It said all six entered North Korea illegally between 2009 and 2012 — either by jumping off a Chinese cruise ship in rivers along the North Korea-China border, or by walking across the rivers when they were frozen.
Yonhap said some of the men, whose ages ranged from 27 to 67, had posted pro-North Korea comments on the Internet under false names.
They “had fallen under the delusion that they would be treated well by the North Korean government when the country’s official media introduced them by their pseudonyms,” Yonhap said.
Some of them had only managed to find work in South Korea as day laborers due to family troubles, business failures or other hardships, and decided to defect in hopes their lives would improve in North Korea, it said.
While more than 23,500 North Koreans have escaped to South Korea from North Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953, defections the other way are very rare.
The men told South Korean authorities they had been held and questioned in various detention centers across North Korea for up to 45 months before their repatriation.
They reportedly expressed disappointment and a sense of betrayal at the way they had been treated in North Korea, with some saying that they were not treated for health problems or allowed to leave their rooms in the detention centers.
The husband of the South Korean woman said he and his wife had planned to commit suicide together. But the man failed to kill himself after strangling his wife. The six could be charged with violating the strict National Security Law, which bans unauthorized contacts with North Korea.
Yesterday, South Korea returned four North Korean fishermen and their boat after it drifted accidentally into southern waters.
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