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North Korea demands Seoul return waitresses who ‘defected’ from China after threat to scrap Donald Trump summit
Pyongyang claims the women were kidnapped from a North Korean state-run restaurant in China while Seoul insists they defected of their own free will
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North Korea has demanded Seoul repatriate a dozen waitresses who fled to the South two years ago, just days after abruptly calling off a planned inter-Korean meeting following weeks of tentative rapprochement.
The issue has long been controversial, with Pyongyang claiming the women were kidnapped from a North Korean state-run Azalea Friendship Restaurant in Ningbo, China in 2016. Seoul insists they defected of their own free will.
But the restaurant’s manager said in a recent interview he had lied to the women and blackmailed them into following him under the orders of the South’s spy agency.
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The fate of the women could jeopardise relations between the two countries, said a statement from the North’s Red Cross carried by the official KCNA news agency late Saturday.
“The South Korean authorities should … send our women citizens to their families without delay and thus show the will to improve North-South ties,” the statement said.
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