North Korean Restaurant Manager Defector Says He Was Blackmailed to Defect

It looks like the Kim regime has made good progress on getting the restaurant workers returned to North Korea:

A former North Korean restaurant manager who defected to South Korea in 2016 together with a dozen female workers claimed Sunday that Seoul’s spy agency had lured and blackmailed him into defecting.

Ho Kang-il’s claim, made in a phone interview with Yonhap News Agency, corroborates suspicions that the high-profile defection was not voluntary and the then-government of President Park Geun-hye orchestrated it behind the scenes.

During the interview, Ho claimed that the South’s National Intelligence Service had tried to persuade him to defect, saying it would help him open a restaurant in a Southeast Asian nation, but the spy agency didn’t make good on the promise.

“Originally, I was a cooperator of the NIS and brought information to them,” Ho said. “But they lured me, saying that if I come (to the South) with my employees, they would get us to obtain South Korean citizenship and then they would open a restaurant in Southeast Asia that could also be used as an NIS hideout. They told me to run the restaurant there with the employees.”

Ho claimed NIS agents blackmailed him when he hesitated.

“They threatened that unless I come to the South with the employees, they would divulge to the North Korean Embassy that I had cooperated with the NIS until then,” Ho said. “I had no choice but to do what they told me to.”

He also said that the restaurant employees had thought they would be going to a restaurant in Southeast Asia, and it was only after they got on board the flight that they learned they were headed to the South.

Questions about their defection first arose in May after a local cable broadcaster aired an interview with the restaurant manager. Pyongyang has demanded their return, saying they were abducted by South Korean intelligence, but the South Korean government has claimed that all of the North Koreans defected voluntarily.

Last week, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Tomas Ojea Quintana, called for a “thorough” and “independent” investigation after he met with some of the defectors.

“It is clear that there were some shortcomings in regards to how they were brought to South Korea,” Quintana told reporters. “From the information I received from some of them, they were taken to the Republic of Korea without knowing they were coming here.”  [Yonhap]

First of all the ROK intelligence service should be asking North Koreans if they want to defect, however I don’t believe they should not be blackmailing them.  With that said we don’t know if the blackmail claims from the restaurant manager are true.  Remember these allegations from the restaurant manager only came up after the Moon administration came to power.  Is the Moon administration putting him under intense pressure and allowing the North Koreans to contact him with threats against his family back in North Korea?

Remember these restaurant workers could have easily have made statements to the media that they were kidnapped before Moon became President or even over the first year of the Moon administration.  It was only this past May when JTBC, Pyongyang’s favorite South Korean news channel, was allowed to interview the restaurant manager did these claims come up.  It is going to be interesting to see if the Moon administration ups the pressure on the restaurant workers to voluntarily return to North Korea to keep the current peace process moving forward.

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flyingsword
flyingsword
5 years ago

complete BS..those people better be running to the US or other 3rd country embassy before commie moon F*CKs them over

setnaffa
setnaffa
5 years ago

Frankly, it’s easier to believe the reds under Moon are pressuring him than anyo e under Park. As I recall, she was too busy ignoring the Sewol and securing bribes to pay for the rich girl to get horseback riding lessons in Germany.

Did I miss the news coverage where Park was effective at anything except giving money to her friend?

guitard
guitard
5 years ago

When it’s all said and done, I doubt that any of these 13 North Koreans go back to North Korea. The true test will be the family reunions next month. Up until recently, fatty Kim said there was not going to be any family reunions until the ‘abducted’ restaurant employees were returned. But he has since relented. And even with the guy from the UN coming to Korea a few weeks ago and saying he thought they were mislead about where they were going – still nothing from North Korea demanding they be returned in order to go ahead with reunions. Of course … maybe Kim is just waiting until the ROK engineers who are currently at Mount Kumgang resort fixing the place up for the reunions finish their work so that the place is ready for Chinese tourists.

One other thing … I am not big on conspiracy theories. But in the back of my mind, I can’t help but wonder if maybe fat boy is behind this “defection.” He sends these people to South Korea so that he can use them as propaganda tools. It’s not beyond the realm of possibilities.

J6Junkie
J6Junkie
5 years ago

Fatty really learned to play chess now.

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