North Korea demands South Korea hand over 12 waitresses

Waitresses serve Chinese customers at a North Korean restaurant in Changchun, Jilin province, China. Photo: Imagine China.

"South Korean authorities should immediately return our female citizens to their families to demonstrate their will to improve bilateral relations," the North's Red Cross said in a statement yesterday, according toKCNA.

In April 2016, 12 girls working at a North Korean restaurant in the Chinese city of Ningbo arrived in South Korea, attracting international media attention as the largest group of North Korean defectors in years. Pyongyang claimed they had been kidnapped and taken to South Korea.

On the evening of May 10, on the Korean television channel JTBC, Heo Gang Il, the manager of the restaurant where the 12 waitresses worked, suddenly admitted that they were kidnapped and that the incident was staged by him and Korean intelligence.

Heo Gang Il admitted that he deliberately lied that the restaurant was moving to a new location and threatened the waitresses when they hesitated to leave.

Meanwhile, at the time of the incident, the South Korean Unification Ministry issued a statement saying that the North Koreans left voluntarily and without outside assistance.

At an inter-Korean summit last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in pledged to push for denuclearization and work toward a peace treaty.

Pyongyang has made a series of moves to reduce tensions, including releasing three American prisoners and inviting foreign media to witness the dismantling of its nuclear test site, ahead of a summit between Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore next month.

However, Pyongyang last week indefinitely postponed a high-level meeting with South Korea in protest at the Max Thunder joint military exercises between Seoul and Washington taking place from May 11 to 25. It also threatened to cancel the meeting in Singapore.