A North Korean organization targeting South
Korea, the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland (CPRF)
has attacked the rebranding of the arm of South Korean intelligence that investigates every newly arriving defector, calling it a “cunning trick.”
The CPRF Secretariat declared in a news
bulletin released on August 7th that the decision to rename the National
Intelligence Service (NIS)-run “Joint Interrogation Center,” which is now called the
“Defector Protection Center,” is the NIS’ response to “public rebuff and
censure” over its supposed role as a “base for breeding plots and making
conspiracies against the DPRK [North Korea].”
 The newly renamed “Center for the Protection of Residents Escaping from North Korea,” or “Defector Protection Center.” | Image: Yonhap |
The
decision to rename the center, which interviews and checks the backgrounds of
all new defectors in order to both confirm their identities and obtain new intelligence
prior to the majority moving on to the resettlement center “Hanawon,” was taken
at the end of July.
According
to the CPRF Secretariat, since its founding the Joint Interrogation Center’s mission
has been to “allure and abduct both our inhabitants via third countries and our
people who are adrift at sea, before taking them away to South Korea, putting
them in in solitary cells for more than 180 days for interrogation and cooking
up various north Korean spy ring cases.” It declared the center to be “the
Guantanamo Bay of South Korea.”
In keeping
with its role as an inciter of conflict within South Korean society, the article
concluded, “South Koreans from all walks of life should fight for the dismantlement
of the ‘Center for Protection of Defected north Koreans’ [sic; Defector Protection
Center],’ and not be taken in by the cunning trick of the puppet group.”
