More than 100 North Koreans have disappeared after being caught by the secret police while trying to escape the isolated country or even for trying to call relatives in South Korea, a Seoul-based human rights organization said on Thursday, as quoted by "Reuters".
The Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) released a report detailing patterns of enforced disappearances through its research based on interviews with 62 North Korean defectors to South Korea.
Tens of thousands of North Koreans have defected in the decades since the end of the Korean War in 1953, with many of those captured or repatriated sent to prison camps or other detention facilities before being released.
The group identified 113 people in 66 cases of disappearance. Of the 113, 80%, or 90, were arrested in North Korea and the rest in China or Russia, with around 30% missing since leader Kim Jong Un took power in late 2011.
Almost 40% of them disappeared after being caught trying to flee the country, while 26% claimed responsibility for the crime of another family member. Nearly 9% were accused of having relationships with people in South Korea or other countries.
More than 81% disappeared after being transferred and detained by the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the North's secret police known as "bowibu", according to the report.
The report was released just days before the UN Human Rights Council issued its five-yearly universal periodic review of North Korea.
The United Nations estimates that up to 200,000 people are held in a vast network of labor camps run by the MSS, many of them for political reasons. A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report said prisoners were subjected to torture, rape, forced labor, starvation and other inhumane treatment.
Pyongyang has long branded defectors as "human scum," and in the past few years Kim has further tightened border controls.
The North Korean Human Rights Research Association this month dismissed a UN report on human rights abuses, including enforced disappearances, as "fabrications" and a Western conspiracy to escalate the confrontation and tarnish the country's image.
Beijing has denied there are North Korean defectors in China, instead describing them as illegal economic migrants.