[Editorial] Steep bias

The latest developments surrounding a group of 13 North Korean defectors who recently resettled in South Korea gives us several things to think about.

First, the case reminds us of the Cold War-era past in which the two Koreas were engaged in a fierce publicity war about which was the better place to live.

During that time, the two Koreas took full advantage of defectors from either side — to be fair, those from the North far outnumbered those from the South — to blow their own trumpet.

Officials arranged news conferences in which the defectors — as instructed by their hosts — praised their new homes: The North was a “socialist paradise where love of the great or dear leader reaches all over” and the South was a “model capitalist country where one can enjoy a free and prosperous life.”

Much of the old propaganda stunts and rhetoric is gone, but the latest group defection case shows that the two Koreas have yet to shake off the Cold War era approaches toward a high-profile defection case.

As they have done in most cases, North Korean authorities insist that the 13 defectors — 12 young women and a man who had worked in a North Korea-run restaurant in China — were kidnapped by South Korean agents.

They mobilized the state media to show the defectors’ family members accusing South Korea of abducting the workers and demanding their repatriation. The family members also appeared on CNN and sent petitions to the U.N. rights body. 

There are some reasons why North Korea is reacting so sensitively. It is the first time in many years that a group of North Koreans has arrived in the South in a high-profile case. Most recent cases involved a small group of North Koreans coming to the South aboard small boats.

Also, what distinguishes the case of the 13 defectors from the previous cases is that it came at the height of international sanctions imposed on the North over its nuclear and missile provocations.

The U.N.-led sanctions are further straining the North’s already impoverished economy. North Korea runs about 130 restaurants in foreign countries, which is part of the isolated country’s source of foreign currency earnings.

The North obviously does not want the defection to be seen as a case verifying the impact of the international sanctions.

To a certain degree, South Korean officials provided some grounds for the North’s fierce protest. They broke from the tradition of keeping such defection cases from the public and publicly said that the workers decided to flee to South Korea because they had difficulty earning foreign currency to send to Pyongyang due to the drop in the number of restaurant visitors.

Blunders like these, however, does not justify intervention of outside parties like the Lawyers for a Democratic Society, an activist group of attorneys which asked the court to determine whether the defectors are staying in their shelter on their own free will.

The lawyers’ group, which often sympathizes with North Korea, even claims that they secured power-of-attorney from the family members of the 13 defectors to represent the defectors.

All this suggests that the lawyers’ group believes that the 13 people were — as the North claims — abducted by the South. This breaches common sense in many regards.

Most of all, would it be possible to take by force 13 people from their workplace in China and transport them to South Korea via a third country?

The fact that seven of their colleagues chose to go back to the North also discredits the claim that the defectors were taken to the South against their will. 

It is not rare for pro-North Korean groups to go all lengths to stick to their cause. But this time, the lawyers’ group is only making the life of both the defectors and their families in the North harder. It should not play into the hands of the North.