Restaurant manager reveals he tricked North Korean waitresses into defecting
When 13 North Korean workers defected en masse from a restaurant in China in April 2016, it was a propaganda boost for South Korea and a huge embarrassment for their homeland.
Heo Gang-il, the manager of the restaurant in the Chinese port city of Ningbo has told CNN that the young women didn’t defect — he tricked them into going to South Korea at the bidding of South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS). He says he had become an informant for the intelligence agency after becoming disillusioned with Kim Jong Un’s regime.
The South Korean government maintains that the 12 young women defected of their own free will, and took the unusual step of publicizing their decision stating it was the largest group defection since Kim took power in 2011.
Heo says the NIS told him to lie to the waitresses and bring them to South Korea. He told the workers they were relocating to better accommodations. The 12 waitresses and Heo flew to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, with tickets, he says, were paid for by the NIS.
Heo says they were given South Korean passports with false names and they flew to Incheon, South Korea’s main international airport. A journey that takes months for most defectors took these North Koreans just two days.
[CNN]
This entry was posted in China, Humanitarian Aid and Relief, Kim Jong Un, North Korean refugee by Grant Montgomery.
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[…] rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said that his interviews with some of the women revealed concerns about how they ended up in the South. He has urged the South Korean government to repatriate any who wished to return to North […]
[…] The restaurant manager has previously told South Korean news agency Yonhap and other media that an agent from South Korea’s spy agency National Intelligence Service (NIS) used persuasion and threats to get him to enter the South with the workers. Some of the workers say they were unaware they were entering South Korea until they arrived at the South Korean embassy in Malaysia. […]
[…] a bombshell revelation last year, the manager of the restaurant where the waitresses worked said he had lied to them about their final destination and blackmailed them into following him to the South. Heo Gang-il […]