Nine young North Koreans who were forced to return home after being arrested in Laos for illegal entry appeared on North Korean television Friday, claiming that they were kidnapped to defect to South Korea.
The North Koreans, ages between 15-23, were rounded up in Laos on May 10. On May 27, they were expelled to China, where they were subsequently deported to their home country.
The youngsters, neatly dressed and wearing lapel pins of the North's founding leader Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il, explained how they ended up in Laos and their reported journey back home.
Their accounts of the episode were contrary to what have been reported by South Korean and other international human rights activists who helped them in the escape from the North.
During the 26-minute talk show, the youngsters claimed that during several months of their stay in China, they lived in hiding in an apartment arranged by a South Korean Christian missionary who they claimed "hurt" them.
However, they gave no details of the hardship they claimed they had gone through at the apartment.
At the end of the talk show, they, standing stiffly at attention, sang a song pledging loyalty to North Korea's current leader Kim Jong-un.
Meanwhile, North Korean watchers in Seoul said that judging by the fact that there was no hesitation or slip of the tongue throughout the interview, they may have been trained well by their handlers after they were brought back to Pyongyang on May 28.
About 25,000 North Koreans have so far defected to South Korea mostly through China, since the end of the Korean War in 1953.
Southeast Asian countries have recently emerged as a major transit point for those would-be North Korean defectors.
The two Koreas are technically at war, with no peace treaty signed at the end of the Korean conflict. (Yonhap News)
