Defectors 'forgiven' by North Korea

May 20, 2015 03:12

In early summer 2013, the world's media cried foul over the repatriation of a group of nine North Korea children, then aged between 14 and 19, from Laos. They had been picked up by border security as they were being smuggled from China into Laos by South Korean missionaries, in the hope of getting them resettled in South Korea.

Pyongyang is not shy about its hatred of defectors. It refers to them in official media as "human scum" and accuses them of criminal acts, lying about their own country for fame and money and abandoning their own families.

The decision to return the children was widely condemned. Dire predictions were made about their fate: The children were being sent back to prison; they would face a lifetime of retribution and could even be executed.

But here in this room, nearly two years after their return, these former kkot-jebi appear transformed. Four young men dressed in the blue blazers of university students and two boys and two girls in secondary school uniforms, all sat waiting to answer our questions. The ninth member of the group was in a university further away from Pyongyang and could not be brought in at short notice.

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