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North Korea requested the repatriation of 22 North Koreans whose boats drifted into South Korean waters in the West Sea on Feb. 8, a South Korean government official admitted Monday. The government has been under pressure to explain why it turned the 22 back to the North the same day they arrived in the South, without interrogating them individually even for just a few hours.
According to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, North Korea contacted the South through the international standard radio frequency for commercial vessels around 8:20 a.m. on Feb. 8, asking the South to send back two drifting North Korean vessels. At that time, the 22 North Koreans were being transferred from their rubber boats to a South Korean ship. It was about three hours after they were first spotted at 5:10 a.m.
To prevent armed clashes between the two sides in the West Sea, patrol boats from both Koreas have exchanged radio messages using the international standard radio frequency traditionally used between commercial vessels since June 2004.
A South Korean government official said, "At the time, our military authorities could have turned them back immediately. But there were too many of them, so military authorities transferred them to a South Korean naval vessel to find out whether they wanted to defect to the South."
South Korean authorities told the North via the international standard radio frequency that the South will handle the group ¡°from a humanitarian standpoint," the official said. It was around 10 a.m. the same day that the South Korean boat carrying the 22 North Koreans finally left the scene in the West Sea. "Apart from the latest incident, the North often asks us through the international standard radio frequency to send back any ships in distress. We turned the 22 North Koreans back not just because of the North's demand for their repatriation."
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In this 2007 file photo, defecting North Korean artists protest against the forced repatriation of North Korean defectors in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C.
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The Grand National Party decided to find out the truth by convening a session of the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee. In a briefing at the National Assembly, GNP spokeswoman Na Kyung-won said, "The 22 North Koreans came out to the sea on unpowered rubber boats on Lunar New Year's Day after breaking through the North Korean authorities' surveillance cordon. But the National Intelligence Service announced that the North Koreans had no intention to defect to the South. The truth has not been found out, and there is much we do not understand from a commonsense point of view. After finding out the truth, our party will work out a response.
The GNP has asked parliament to convene a session of the Intelligence Committee on Friday, but no schedule has been set, as the GNP has yet to consult with the United Democratic Party, the majority party in the house.
Groups for human rights in North Korea demanded a thorough investigation. The Committee for Democratization of North Korea, a coalition of 21 civic groups led by Hwang Jang-yop, a former secretary of the North Korean Workers' Party, issued a statement. "There are signs that North Koreans are now taking the West Sea as their new defection route in replacement of the North Korean-Chinese border,¡± it said. ¡°To prevent this, the Kim Jong-il regime must have established a strategy so that the Roh Moo-hyun regime would turn North Korean boat people back to the North under the pretext of humanitarian repatriation, and the Roh regime must have followed this strategy in the latest incident."
The statement said refugees from North Korea who have defected through the sea told the group that NIS investigators ¡°usually attempt to leave defecting North Korean refugees in fear and make them feel as if they should return to the North, instead of treating them warmly. We must include civilian experts in investigation processes to prevent the intelligence agency from acting tyrannically any longer."
The Association of North Korean Human Rights Organizations, another federation of 47 domestic and foreign organizations, urged the government ¡°to demand the North find out immediately whether the North Koreans have been executed or are safe. The National Assembly should form a fact-finding mission to find out the truth and release results of its investigation as soon as possible."
Pointing out that 13 of them said they were members of six families and the nine others their neighbors, the association said, "We suspect that they intended to defect to the South. Why didn't you immediately reveal details about how authorities discovered the North Koreans and repatriated them?"
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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