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August 18, 2004
[Have an opinion about the issues discussed in this article?
Sound
off in our Discussion Boards.]
By Joseph Giordono,
Stars and Stripes Pacific Edition
SEOUL — In an unusual public warning, South Korean intelligence
officials said this week that North
Korea is threatening terrorist attacks against the South in
retaliation for supporting two mass defections earlier this year.
In a public advisory released late Monday,
the National Intelligence Service said the warning wasn’t based
on specific information of an impending attack but was issued after
North Korea made public threats regarding the defections.
In July, two groups of refugees — numbering
more than 450 men, women and children — were airlifted from Vietnam
to Seoul after escaping North Korea. While
South Korea called it a humanitarian mission, the North called the
move “premeditated abduction” and “terrorism” against the people
of North Korea.
South Korean officials, while trying not
to chill an already-fragile thaw in relations, denied the North’s
accusations, saying the National Security Law binds South Korea
to accept any North Korean seeking asylum.
“North Korea is threatening our country
with terrorism in retaliation,” the NIS said in issuing the warning.
“We are advising heightened vigilance in view of the refugees’ arrival
and the North’s reaction to it.
“Although there are no specific signs
of terror, we issued the warnings as a precautionary measure.”
The warning focused on South Koreans living
or traveling in China or Southeast Asia and members of groups who
help North Korean defectors in other countries.
According to human rights activists, most
defectors sneak across the North Korean border with China, then
travel to Southeast Asian countries to try and make their way to
South Korea. More than 5,000 North Koreans have defected since the
Korean
War, the groups said, with almost 1,300 of those defections
coming in 2003.
In the past, Seoul has accused the North
of actual attacks. South Koreans say the North was responsible for
a 1983 bombing in Myanmar that killed 17 South Koreans; they also
blame the North for a 1987 bomb aboard a Korean Air Flight off Myanmar’s
coast that killed 115 passengers and crew. On Sunday, South Korean
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young requested that local civic
groups stop encouraging the defection of North Koreans, saying it
would worsen relations between the two nations
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