Two North Koreans who crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL) into South Korea in November of 2019 have reportedly appeared in educational materials published by North Korea’s Ministry of State Security. The two men were forcibly returned to the North by the South Korean government for being “heinous criminals.”
On May 14, a Daily NK source in North Korea described recently-published ideological education materials targeted at North Korean laborers overseas. The materials listed instances where North Korean defectors attempted to escape and then were forcibly repatriated. One of the examples listed in the materials was that of two octopus fishermen who took a wooden boat into South Korean waters, only to be repatriated by the South Korean government to the North.
A Ministry of State Security (MSS) “education officer” explained the two fishermen’s ordeal by saying that “The two fisherman who tried to take a squid [octopus; in North Korea both octopus and squid are called “squid”] fishing boat into South Korea are national traitors.”
The officer also added that “the South Korean government eventually made the [fishermen] come back to the Fatherland [North Korea].”
However, the Ministry of State Security education officer reportedly did not mention the alleged crimes that the two fishermen were accused of and later repatriated and executed for.
The South Korean navy captured the boat the two men were on when they tried to flee after allegedly killing 16 fellow crew members.
Ultimately, the South Korean government decided to deport the two men back to North Korea after concluding that they could not be recognized as refugees under international law because they were “heinous criminals” who had committed serious non-political crimes, including murder.
“After the navy captured the two [fishermen], they expressed a desire to defect, but [we] decided to deport them after concluding that their [accounts] were inconsistent and unreliable,” South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said at the time. The South Korean government’s conclusion about the two men’s intentions appears to differ from that of the North Korean government, which claims that the pair did in fact try to escape into South Korea.
A compilation of accounts from multiple sources inside North Korea suggests the following: After the South Korean government handed the two men over to the North Korean authorities at Panmunjom on Nov. 7, 2019, they imprisoned the pair in a MSS detention center in Sariwon, North Hwanghae Province. The two men were reportedly executed less than two months after their repatriation to North Korea.
Once the two men were in the hands of the North Korean authorities, they were tortured and investigated for approximately fifty days. The sources all confirmed that the authorities beheaded the men outside of the public eye.
North Korea has accused North Korean defectors of being “criminals” in the past. The North Korean authorities have used these tactics against defectors who have engaged in activities that threatened the North Korean regime or exposed the authorities’ secrets in South Korea or another country. By doing this, the North Korean authorities intend to undermine the credibility of the defectors’ testimonies and mislead the public about their plans and activities.
In 2017, a defector named Ju Kyung Chol, who escaped to a refugee camp in Russia, faced similar allegations. The North Korean authorities accused him of “raping a minor” and requested that the Russian government extradite him to North Korea.
However, the Russian government investigated Ju’s alleged crimes, saying that if Ju was a criminal, they could not send a person who had requested refugee status back to North Korea simply because the authorities had asked them to do so. The Russian investigation confirmed that Ju was in Russia at the time of the alleged crimes and thus accepted his request for protection.
Unfortunately, North Korean agents later kidnapped and executed Ju in spite of the Russian investigation.
In the case of the two fishermen, however, the South Korean government handed them over to the North Korean authorities without taking legal action of any kind. The South Korean authorities kept the two men in custody for just five days and continues to insist that they decided to repatriate the two men after a thorough review of relevant laws.
South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong referenced the November 2019 case during an invitational forum at the Kwanhun Club on Apr. 22.
“They were so obviously heinous criminals – people that we absolutely cannot accept into [South Korea],” he said. “After reviewing the constitution and related laws, [we] found that there was no problem with returning them to North Korea.”
*Translated by S & J
