Some put forward sickness, threats to family as reasons


A flurry of speculation has arisen over why a 66-year-old North Korean defector returned to the communist state last month after six years here.

Some of her close acquaintances argue that the authorities in Pyongyang might have threatened to kill her son. Others say that she had been informed that he was very sick.

Park Jong-suk arrived to the South in June 2006 alone after having crossed the border into China in March of the same year.

The North’s state media reported last Thursday that she left the South as she was “disenchanted” with South Korean society.

“All jobs given to defectors (in South Korea) are the most humbling and difficult ones. General Kim Jong-un embraced me though I committed an unpardonable sin before the party and the nation,” she said during a press conference last week.

“The reason that I went to the South is all because I was in a wrong ideological state. I was dragged into the South after South Korean operatives lured me.”

Park Sang-hak, who leads the Seoul-based activist group Fighters for Free North Korea, told media that the defector’s son’s worsening health might have been the primary reason for her return.

“She appears to have talked with her son indirectly or directly over the phone. I heard that she was informed of her son being very sick,” he said.

“She had some sort of resentment against her relatives in the South as well, saying they don’t help her. She said, ‘What a (bad) life I have here all by myself.’ I think she came here as she thought she could get some financial help from her relatives.”

She reportedly claimed that her half-sibling was a former South Korean lawmaker.

Lee Ae-ran, another defector who was close to Park, said that the North had threatened to kill her son.

“She was agonizing over (whether to return) after she got a phone call in April from the North that threatened her. This is what I heard from Park’s relatives,” she told media.

“Her son was dragged to a coal mine as his mother defected to the South. He was then taken to the security department. (Park might have returned) as they threatened to kill (her son).”

It is rare for a North Korean defector to return to the impoverished state. In a similar case, Yu Tae-jun returned to the North in 2000 and held a press conference in Pyongyang. A year later, he defected to the South again.

Meanwhile, the number of those defecting to the South declined drastically in the first five months of the year, during which new leader Kim Jong-un took over state affairs after the death of his father Kim Jong-il last December.

The figure between January and May was tallied at 610, a sharp decline from 1,062 recorded during the same period last year. The decline appears to be because of tightened border control by the North and China.

More than 23,700 North Koreans have defected here since the 1950-53 Korean War.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)