North Korea has demanded South Korea return all 31 of its nationals who drifted across the western sea border by boat last month after four of them said they did not want to return home.
The government in Seoul "pressured them to remain in South Korea by appeasement, deception and threat," North Korea's Red Cross said late yesterday in a statement carried by the state- run Korean Central News Agency. "This cannot be interpreted otherwise than a grave provocation."
South Korea's Red Cross said yesterday it will today return 27 of the North Koreans who arrived on February 5th as the other four wished to stay. There is no change in South Korea's position, Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong Joo said today in Seoul.
The latest conflict risks worsening relations between the two countries, which exchanged artillery fire in November after North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing four people.
South Korean President Lee Myung Bak said on March 1st his country was open to talks with North Korea.
South Korea "is ready to engage in dialogue with the North anytime with an open mind," Mr Lee said in a national address on March 1st to mark the anniversary of a 1919 independence movement against Japan's colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.
The first talks between the two sides in four months collapsed in February after North Korean military officials walked out, refusing to acknowledge their country's role in sinking a South Korean warship in March that killed 46 sailors.
The 27 North Koreans will be returned today through the border village of Panmunjom, South Korea's Red Cross said yesterday. More than 20,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a cease-fire, leaving the two nations technically at war, according to estimates by the Unification Ministry.
The number of North Koreans who defected to South Korea fell for the first time in five years last year as North Korean leader Kim Jong Il tightens border security, according to Seoul- based rights groups, including the Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights.
Bloomberg