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.

North Korean media and