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Activist: NKorean worker flees Kaesong factory
By HYUNGJIN KIM,Associated Press Writer AP - Wednesday, December 10
SEOUL, South Korea - A North Korean who was working at an enclave of South Korean factories in her communist country has defected to China with the aim of seeking asylum in the South, a South Korean civic activist said Wednesday.
South Korea's Unification Ministry said it could not immediately confirm the claim. But if true, it would be the first attempted defection involving a North Korean working at the jointly run Kaesong industrial complex in North Korea, ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said.
The 27-year-old has been hiding in China since fleeing the Kaesong complex near the North-South border in September, said Kim Yong-hwa, a North Korean defector-turned-activist now living in South Korea.
Kim said the woman expressed frustration with life in the impoverished, communist North and told him in telephone conversations that she wanted to live in South Korea.
"She told me South Koreans she met in Kaesong were very kind. She also said South Korea has a very good technology that she had never imagined in the North," said Kim, who heads a civic group that has helped North Koreans defect.
Kim Min-kyung, an official at the Kaesong Industrial District Management Committee, said she could not confirm the activist's account.
The Kaesong complex, which opened in 2004, houses more than 80 South Korean factories that hire some 36,000 North Koreans.
However, tensions between the two Koreas have been high since South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office in February pledging to be firmer with Pyongyang.
The North earlier this month restricted traffic across the countries' shared border, suspending several other joint projects. However, the lucrative Kaesong factories continue to operate.
The two Koreas technically remain at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and are divided by a heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone.
Since the war's end, more than 14,000 North Koreans have defected to the South to escape hunger and political oppression, according to South Korean government data. Most cross the border into neighboring China.
Activists claim tens of thousands of North Koreans are living in hiding in China. As part of a bilateral treaty with North Korea, China is obligated to repatriate defectors.
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