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1st LD Writethru: DPRK says to send families of 13 "defectors" to Seoul for face-to-face contact

Xinhua, April 22, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced on Friday it will send families of the 13 DPRK workers, who are alleged by South Korea to have defected, to see them in Seoul, state media reported Friday.

The family members will be sent to Seoul via the truce village of Panmunjom, the DPRK's official KCNA news agency reported.

The DPRK made the decision after the families remaining in the north requested to meet face-to-face with their daughters who had been abducted by South Korean intelligence to Seoul, reported the KCNA, which carried a statement issued by the chief of the central committee of the DPRK Red Cross Society.

The statement was sent directly to the South Korean counterpart, the report said.

The statement said the "group defection" as claimed by the South Korean government was in fact kidnapping by deception and conciliatory measures, urging the South Korean Red Cross Society to take necessary steps to facilitate the meeting in light of humanitarian principles.

On April 8, Seoul's Unification Ministry said a group of 13 people from the DPRK working in an overseas restaurant defected to South Korea. South Korean media said this marked the first time that a group of DPRK citizens working at the same overseas restaurant defected to South Korea.

South Korean media reported that the 13 people -- 12 waitresses and one manager -- chose to defect to the south because they were pressured to turn in revenues back to the DPRK.

Seoul also advised South Korean nationals not to visit overseas restaurants run by the DPRK to cut its source of foreign currency.

A spokesman for the DPRK Red Cross Society last week called this "a group abduction" and "a hideous crime" against the DPRK dignity and its social system, demanding the South Korean government return the 13 DPRK nationals immediately.

On Monday, seven waitresses who worked at the same restaurant and later returned to the DPRK were given an exclusive interview with CNN in Pyongyang telling how the restaurant manager tricked them and worked together with South Korean authorities to lure their colleagues to Seoul. Endi