March 28, 2024
News

Advocate says 13 North Korean defectors are healthy

The human rights protector denies rumors of hunger strike and death of one female defector

An attorney at the South Korean intelligence office on Thursday said all of the North Koreans who defected after working at a restaurant in China are all healthy, dismissing North Korean government’s argument that they were abducted and protesting with hunger strikes.

Park Young-sik, who serves at the North Korean refugees protection center under the National Intelligence Service (NIS) as a human rights defender, discussed the individual interviews she carried out with the 12 female defectors over the weekend after the Lawyers for a Democratic Society (Minbyun) requested that they be allowed to meet them.

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