More overseas North Korean restaurant workers flee, defect, Seoul says

North Korean performers entertain customers at the Okryugwan restaurant in Beijing in February. An unspecified number of North Koreans working at an unidentified Pyongyang-run restaurant overseas have escaped their workplace and will come to South Korea, South Korean officials said Tuesday. | AP

SEOUL – An unspecified number of North Koreans working at a Pyongyang-run restaurant overseas have escaped their workplace and will come to South Korea, South Korean officials said Tuesday.

The announcement by Seoul’s Unification Ministry came after South Korean media reported that two or three female employees at a North Korean-run restaurant in China fled and went to an unidentified Southeast Asian country earlier this month.

It is the second known group escape by North Korean restaurant workers dispatched abroad in recent weeks. In April, a group of 13 North Koreans who had worked at a similarly themed restaurant in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo defected to South Korea.

The latest escapes will likely enrage Pyongyang, which typically accuses Seoul of trying to abduct or entice North Korean citizens to defect. South Korea has denied the accusation.

After the 13 workers — a male manager and 12 waitresses — arrived in Seoul in April, Pyongyang claimed they were kidnapped by South Korean spies and repeatedly demanded their return. South Korea said the workers chose to resettle in the South on their own. It was the largest group defection by North Koreans to the South since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took power in 2011.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/05/24/asia-pacific/overseas-north-korean-restaurant-workers-flee-defect-seoul-says/#.V0QKndQrLMp