The two Koreas stepped up an angry war of words on Friday as tensions mounted over a series of North Korean defections and the South’s rejection of Pyongyang’s repeated offers of military talks.
Tensions have been running high on the divided Korean peninsula ever since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January followed by a long-range rocket launch.
In the past month, a new source of friction has emerged with two cases of group defections by North Korean staff working in Pyongyang-run restaurants in China.
A dozen women and their restaurant manager arrived in Seoul in April, and three others from a separate restaurant followed them this week.
North Korea insists the staff were duped and effectively kidnapped by South Korean agents and are being held in the South against their will — an accusation Seoul categorically denies. “The allurement and abduction clearly proves that the puppet forces of South Korea are the most hideous human rights abusers,” a spokesperson for the North Korean Red Cross said in a statement.
Referring to the case of the three women who had been working in northern Chinese province of Shanxi, the spokesperson said they were the victims of a “premeditated abduction.” Seoul’s unification ministry dismissed the “groundless” accusations on Friday, and said North Korea could better spend time examining why its citizens wanted to flee.
