Seoul: 13 North Korean workers at foreign restaurant defect

Meanwhile, North Korea is detaining two USA citizens and one Canadian. Jeong didn’t say which country the North Koreans worked in before defecting.

The North Koreans chose to defect after their business took a hit from economic penalties imposed against their country for its nuclear test in January, Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon Hee said Friday at a televised briefing. “North Koreans in overseas restaurants are believed to be under heavy pressure to send money to their country”.

The Unification Ministry’s website says more than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea as of March, although group defections are rare.

Commenting on Donald Trump’s plan to arm Japan and South Korea with nuclear weapons, Secretary of State John Kerry said, “I can’t think of anything that would be more volatile”.

North Korea is known to be strict about vetting and selecting people to work in its overseas restaurants, knowing they will inevitably be exposed to information about the outside world that they are mostly protected from in the North. South Korea’s spy agency estimates that North Korea runs about 130 restaurants in other countries – about 100 in China and the others in Russia, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

Majority of the North Korean restaurants are based in Asia, namely China, Vietnam and Cambodia, The only North Korean restaurant in the Western Europe – which was based in Amsterdam – shut down a year ago.

The government official, who spoke to local reporters Tuesday on condition of anonymity, said Pyongyang had gained the ability to attach a warhead to a Rodong missile.

North Korea recently threatened to “scorch” South Korea’s president’s offices with its “powerful large-caliber multiple-rocket-launching systems”.

Experts have warned the communist nation could engage in more direct provocations, such as naval skirmishes near the tense maritime border off the west coast or clashes along the land border, as leader Kim Jong-un tries to assert his leadership ahead of May’s key congress of the ruling Workers’ Party.

Yesterday China banned imports of coal, iron, gold and titanium from North Korean, as well as restricting the export of jet fuel and other oil products necessary to make rocket fuel.

“Peace-brokering should never be at the price of appeasing Pyongyang’s nuclear ambition”, the English-language site said, adding that North Korea has a “credibility problem” when it comes to denuclearisation.

“Although we do not have official statistics, we believe that we can already see the effects of sanctions”.