CAPTIVES

N. Korea Arrests Defector for ‘Child Abduction’

Broadcasts defector’s “confession” at staged press conference.

In a press conference in Pyongyang, North Korean authorities on Friday presented a man they claim is a defector working for South Korea. The man, Ko Hyon Chol, was arrested in late May and accused of trying to bring two North Korean orphans to South Korea. He broke down and cried during the event, offering what appeared to be a coerced confession: “I committed the unpardonable crime of being involved in attempted child abduction,” he said. He originally left North Korea in January 2013 before returning in 2014. Pyongyang often claims that those who have fled North Korea to move to the South were kidnapped by South Korean authorities, though those who have fled say they did it of their own free will.