N. Korea says it has detained four S. Koreans for illegal entry(real or imagined?)

Yonhap News ^ | 02/26/10

[TigerLikesRooster]

N. Korea says it has detained four S. Koreans for illegal entry

SEOUL, Feb. 26 (Yonhap) -- North Korea said Friday it has detained and is questioning four South Koreans for illegally entering the country.

The official Korean Central News Agency neither identified the South Koreans nor say how they entered the communist country. The brief report, monitored in Seoul, only said the South Koreans were "recently detained" and are now under investigation.

The crossing, if confirmed, would mark the first illegal entry by a foreigner into the North after Robert Park, a Korean-American missionary and human rights activist, walked into the country across the frozen Tumen river along the Chinese-North Korean border in December.

Park was released earlier this month.

South Korean Unification Ministry officials said they have yet to check the report on the South Koreans.

[TigerLikesRooster]

A while back after Robert Park went into N. Korea, N. Koreans claimed that a S. Korean crossed over into their country, a kind-of defection. No news about him came out since then. No obligatory interview of him denouncing S. Korea and extolling N. Korean state. It was suspicious. I thought the whole thing could be made up by N. Korea.

Now we have this news. Nobody knows who they are yet. There would be many possibilities, among which are: (1) N. Korea made up the incident or (2) kidnapped some S. Koreans. If they really hold S. Koreans now, they will make a valuable bargaining chip. S. Korean government has been refusing to send economic aid until N. Korea meets some modest conditions, which N. Korea has been rejecting so far. N. Korea has employed usual tactic of intimidation via provocation(missile launch, naval gun fire, picking firefight with S. Korean navy vessel,) all of which failed to impress S. Korea so far.

If they kidnap some S. Koreans, N. Koreans can now have an upper hand in this negotiation.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[SevenofNine]

OH BOY NOt again

I hope it one of those Robert Park episodes

[Jet Jaguar]

BTTT

[rdl6989]

Agreed. Another Robert Park episode was my first thought.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Thank you for keeping us up to date.

[caww]

This is interesting also in light of US and S. Korea will be doing their joint military manuvers soon...on another thread I saw in the last couple days. Hummmm...could be our guys having something to do with this Tiger?

[TigerLikesRooster]

NK said they will respond to the provocation(SK-US maneuver)with all they have. We will see how much of their rhetoric will pan out.

[caww]

Keep us posted on this...and lets hope it’s all talk from Kim boy.

[caww]

Keep us posted on this...and lets hope it’s all talk from Kim boy.