Family and coworkers of the 12 female North Korean restaurant workers involved in April’s mass-defection to South Korea held an interview last week with a Pyongyang representative of the Los Angeles-based Minjok Tongshin.

But while the video was said to be filmed on August 21 – four days after Seoul announced the release of the former workers from  – the interviewees seemed to believe their daughters were still being “detained” in South Korean government facilities.

“I still don’t know if my daughter is alive or dead,” Ri Kum Ryang, the mother of one of the ‘abducted’ former restaurant workers, told the