A couple and a third woman who allegedly “re-defected” to North Korea last year and were subsequently paraded before the media in Pyongyang were recently caught attempting to flee the country once again. The background to the story is now at the center of attention in South Korea.

Kim Kwang Ho and his family fled North Korea again on July 14th and were apparently hiding in the Chinese border city of Yanji when the domestic Chinese security forces arrested them. Koh Kyung Hui, who also appeared at the Pyongyang press conference in January, was also arrested by the North Korean National Security Agency on the Sino-North Korean border.

The secretary-general of a South Korean civic group that aids defectors, Kim Hee Tae explained to Daily NK on the 15th, “Kim Kwang Ho, his wife and daughter, and even his brother and sister-in-law all defected together, but were arrested by Chinese public security in Yanji.”

On the 9th, meanwhile, Open Radio for North Korea revealed that Koh successfully defected, but then “made a call to North Korea from Changbai, across the border from Hyesan, to organize the escape of her son and daughter. Her location was revealed via the phone call, and she was caught by the North Korean security services.”

A Daily NK source has confirmed the latter story, explaining, “In order to defect, Koh turned down a decent house in downtown Hyesan from the authorities, and had been living in a house in the Kanggu area of the city, which is near the border. From that time it became clear that she was contacting China and preparing to defect.”

Had it been successful, the defection of the group (Kim, his wife and child, and Koh) would have drastically raised the risk that the pressure the North Korean authorities put on the group to provide a devastating critique of life in South Korea during their January press conference would have been unveiled.

During the press conference, Kim asserted, “South Chosun was a really dirty world. There was fraud, trickery and scheming all over the place; I could not live in a world like that.” For her part, Koh said, “I could not possibly face the harsh reality of South Chosun and lived in anxiety and tears. Because I was a defector in South Chosun I could not find a job anywhere.”

The North Korean National Security Agency has been working since last year to bring defectors back to the North in the guise of “re-defectors.” The South Korean government department that deals with defection cases has cautioned defectors against being fooled by friends in North Korea urging them to return to the border region for meetings, or suggesting that re-defectors will be forgiven for the crime of defection as long as they return to the country quickly.

“There is no way that a defector who had experienced freedom in South Korea would then return to repressive North Korea and criticize South Korea in a press conference if it were not under duress,” Lee Seok Young, the director of Free NK Radio, pointed out.