DHAKA: North Korean families plead for defectors, who were abducted in April, to return home.

Twelve young North Korean women who worked at the restaurant and a male restaurant manager arrived in the South Korean capital.

For Seoul, it was a propaganda bonanza; for Pyongyang, a huge embarrassment, CNN reports on Thursday (May 12).

The North Korean Red Cross was quick to challenge South Korea’s version of events, calling the defections instead ‘a mass abduction’.

On the CNN crew’s last day in Pyongyang after covering the recent Workers’ Party congress, authorities here brought family members of three restaurant employees who went to Seoul in front of the network’s cameras.

It was a highly orchestrated event. We were told once arriving in North Korea that ‘special exclusive coverage’ was planned for us, but there was no hint about what it would be until two hours before the interview.

North Korean authorities have told the families that their daughters and sisters are being kept in solitary confinement and have been cut off from outside information.

The young women have purportedly become sick after a hunger strike demanding they be returned home, but Pyongyang hasn’t disclosed how it acquired such reports.

South Korea’s Ministry of Unification told CNN that allegations that the girls are in solitary confinement or conducting a hunger strike are ‘completely untrue’.

It said the girls will stay in government custody for several months while adjusting to life in South Korea.

These families cannot comprehend how someone they know so well could run away to the hated South.

They said they believe the women were duped into going, told they were being relocated to another government-run North Korean restaurant in Malaysia.

BDST: 1258 HRS, May 12, 2016
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