NK defector issue re

Members of North Korean defector groups hold a press conference opposing the repatriation of the 12 North Korean restaurant workers who defected from China, and call for government protection of defectors in front of the Seoul Government Complex on Saturday. / Yonhap

By Kim Bo-eun

The issue of North Korean defectors to the South is again heightening tension between the Koreas, as the reconciliatory atmosphere has suddenly gone sour following the North's unilateral cancellation of high-level inter-Korean talks last week.

North Korea said it would not return to the table until the South resolved defector issues.

In the South there are around 30,000 people who have defected from the North. A high-profile case was the April 2016 defection of 12 North Korean workers from a Pyongyang-run restaurant in China.

The South Korean government said the defection was made according to the workers' free will, but North Korea claimed the South abducted the workers.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Saturday reported on North Korea's Red Cross calling for the workers to be sent back.

"(The South) must show willingness to improve inter-Korean relations by promptly sending our female citizens back to their families," a spokesman of the Red Cross was quoted as saying.

The spokesman said the South's handling of the case will influence prospects of resolving humanitarian issues between the Koreas. One of them is the reunions of family members separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, which the two Koreas agreed to resume on Aug. 15 in the Panmunjeom Declaration made at last month's inter-Korean summit.

The North Korean Red Cross' demand was in line with the country's earlier stance, as it had been calling for the repatriation of the restaurant workers as a condition for resuming the reunions of separated families.

While there had been suspicions that the South's National Intelligence Service (NIS) under the former Park Geun-hye administration orchestrated the defection _ or abduction _ as a means to consolidate conservatives ahead of a local election, the two-year-old issue resurfaced after a local broadcaster aired a report in which some of the workers said they did not intend to come to the South.

A lawyers' association filed a complaint against members of the former Park administration who are suspected of having plotted the incident.

Members of North Korean defector groups held a press conference in front of the Seoul Government Complex, Saturday, opposing the restaurant workers' repatriation. They called for the government to recognize the defected workers as South Koreans and protect them.

The defector issue has halted inter-Korean talks. The Koreas were expected to hold a high-level meeting last week and discuss holding Red Cross talks to enable the reunion, but the meeting fell through after the North canceled abruptly.

Pyongyang cited the ongoing joint military drills between South Korea and the U.S., but was also apparently discomforted by a high-profile defector's denunciation of the regime.

Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat to the U.K. and the highest-ranking North Korean official to have defected to the South, told the press last week that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will by no means give up the regime's nuclear weapons. He also referred to the leader as impatient, impulsive and violent-tempered.

North Korean media condemned Thae, referring to him as "human trash" who "tore down the regime's dignity," and demanded the South take measures to prevent further such cases from occurring.

Amid this situation, two North Korean men in their 40s crossed the western sea border into the South on a boat on Saturday.

The two told the authorities they were willing to defect to the South. The South Korean Coast Guard picked them up and sent them to the NIS for questioning.

The defection via the West Sea comes nine months since the last one.