by REERA YOO | @reeraboo
editor@charactermedia.com
South Korea on Tuesday returned two of the five North Korean fishermen who were rescued from southern waters earlier this month, but said it would not repatriate the remaining three crew members who expressed their wish to defect.
The five North Koreans were found drifting near South Korea’s Ulleung island on July 4 after an engine failure, according to CNN.
When three of the fishermen requested to defect to South Korea, the North demanded Seoul’s Unification Ministry to return all five sailors and allow them to meet their family members, threatening to take “stern actions” if Seoul refused to follow its instructions. North Korea also urged the ministry to reveal the identities of the those wishing to defect, a move Seoul rejected on humanitarian grounds.
“It is a known fact that the authorities of the South has been persistently coercing our people who have drifted to the South to defect to South Korea,” North Korea’s Red Cross said in a statement. “The South should stop its conventional measures that don’t work on anybody and immediately return our people.”
However, Seoul maintained that the three fishermen chose to stay in South Korea on their free will.
On Tuesday morning, two fishermen were repatriated at the truce village of Panmunjom, where they were greeted by their relatives and North Korean officials. Meanwhile, the remaining three North Koreans are scheduled to receive resettlement training, according to unification ministry.
Tension between the divided Koreas remains high, especially after North Korea launched a missile from a submarine in May and sentenced two South Koreans to life in prison last month on charges of espionage.
Despite this tension, North and South Korea usually follow the practice of repatriating civilians who accidentally land in each other’s territory, according to Yonhap News Agency.
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