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Charging the arrival in South Korea of 468 North Korean defectors as "South Korean authorities' systematic and premeditated act of enticement and kidnapping and terrorism in broad daylight," North Korea threatened, "We'll never sit back idly, but deal a due blow." Pyongyang meanwhile is showing signs of boycotting working-level contacts for inter-Korean ministerial talks scheduled for August 3.
As far as the defector issue is concerned, North Korea is not entitled to make any utterances. If the North Korean regime had something to say to South Korea or the international community, it should be something like this: "We are totally responsible for the defector issue. Because we haven't fed the people well, but have repressed them. We are sorry to South Korea and China for having caused them trouble." There is only one reason why North Koreans escape from the land risking their lives and seek asylum in South Korea wandering in the Chinese continent and traveling to even Southeast Asia. It is the failure of the North Korean regime to feed them.
Had Pyongyang even a modicum of reason, it would be ashamed of its failure to guarantee the survival of its citizens, as a consequence of which they desperately search for ways of life, abandoning their country and wandering long distances. Pyongyang is making a spectacle of itself when it is engaged in intimidation calling the defection "enticement and kidnapping" and "terrorism in broad daylight," let alone extending thanks to a country that has taken care of and embraced the escapees who had nowhere to go. The world knows that what threatens the North Korean system today is not escapees who cross the border to survive, nor the South Korean government that accommodates them as brethren, but the incompetence of and repression by the North Korean regime itself.
Pyongyang has resorted, in vain, to all sorts of abhorrent measures to block the escape of its residents like setting up double or triple guard wires along the border, infiltrating its security agents into China after escapees, and putting to death defectors who had returned home. The only way available for the North to solve the defector issue is to provide the people with hope, resolve its poverty and remove the repression. It reveals its heart that the North maintains contacts for inter-Korean economic cooperation projects, beneficial to itself, while showing sings of boycotting inter-Korean dialogue on account of the defector issue.
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