SEOUL, South Korea - Six South Koreans who had been held in North Korea on charges of illegal entry returned to their home country Friday, after Pyongyang released them in a gesture that could help to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
The six men were handed over to the South Korean authorities at the border village of Panmunjom, the South’s Unification Ministry said in a statement.
Little was known about the men beyond their surnames and their ages, which were said to be between 27 and 67. The Unification Ministry said it would question them to find out how and when they had arrived in North Korea. It is a violation of the South’s National Security Act for a South Korean to travel to the North without government permission.
Since 2010, Pyongyang has said that it is holding several South Koreans for entering the North illegally, but it has not responded to the South’s requests for their identities and other details.
In the past two decades, roughly 25,000 North Koreans have defected to the South, fleeing hunger and political repression in their homeland. But South Koreans also have fled to the North on occasion, defecting through North Korean diplomatic missions abroad or making their way across the inter-Korean land border, often to escape legal, financial or marital troubles in the South.
South Korean officials suspect that some South Koreans may also have fled to the North through its border with China. Nearly all of the North Korean defectors to the South have gone through China.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 10/26/2013