South Korea on Wednesday criticized the repatriation by Laos of nine North Korean defectors at a U.N. meeting, calling for the international community’s support to ensure their safety and humanitarian treatment.

The seven men and two women aged between 15 and 23 were caught by Laotian authorities while trying to reach the South Korean Embassy on May 10. They were expelled to China last week and now likely face severe punishment in their oppressive homeland.

Shin Dong-ik, deputy minister for multilateral and global affairs, urged Pyongyang to guarantee the nine orphans’ lives and safety and to not impose any unjust punishment and treatment on them at a U.N. Human Rights Council session in Geneva.

"Shin called on North Korea to cooperate with the council’s new fact-finding panel and improve human rights situations,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"He also stressed the international community’s obligations to protect defectors who sought to avoid North Korea’s serious human rights violations and repressive conditions.”

Seoul has been seeking to increase pressure on the communist regime and draw cooperation from the international community to improve dire living conditions and cease punishment of repatriated defectors.

Top U.N. human rights officials including High Commissioner Navi Pillay have called on North Korea’s neighbors to comply with the principle of non-refoulement, which forbids turning over “victims of persecution.”

Antonio Guterres, head of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said last week that it was “deeply concerned about the safety and fundamental human rights of these individuals if they are returned (to the North).”

Marzuki Darusman, U.N. special rapporteur on North Korea, also expressed concerns about the penalties and treatment the orphans could face, saying “all the concerned authorities have an urgent responsibility to ensure their protection.”

"No one should be refouled to (North Korea), where they may face persecution or severe punishment, including torture and the death penalty,” he said in a separate statement.

The UNHRC has long criticized the communist regime’s “grave, widespread and systemic” human rights breaches.

In March, the 47-nation body approved its first-ever formal inquiry mechanism into rapes, torture, public executions, slave labor, abductions and other atrocities believed to be imposed on deported defectors and other political inmates at its sprawling prison camps across North Korea.

By Shin Hyon-hee

(heeshin@heraldcorp.com)