Pyongyang is demanding the return of defectors to the South, where there is concern that the government could accede to that demand in order to get discussions on nuclear weapons and security issues back on track.
Image: picture-alliance/AP/A. Young-joon
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North Korea is demanding the return of 13 defectors to the South as a condition for the resumption of talks with Seoul, with support groups for thousands who have fled the repressive regime in the North saying there is genuine fear that Seoul might give in to Pyongyang's demands and that their lives might be at risk.
Pyongyang is demanding that 12 women who had worked at a North Korean restaurant in China and their manager be returned to the North after it was claimed on a television program that the women had not been told they were being taken to South Korea in 2016 and that they have been tricked into going by the South Korean intelligence services.
On Saturday, the North Korean Red Cross demanded that the women be sent back to Pyongyang and repeated the accusation that the women had been kidnapped.
The demands coincide with Pyongyang cancelling a high-level meeting scheduled for last week that was designed to build on the agreements reached when South Korean President Moon Jae-in met with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, at the border village of Panmunjom late last month.
The North is also angered at joint US-South Korean military exercises that are going ahead, but analysts say the demands are a frequently used tactic by Pyongyang.
A South Korean media report has claimed a top Pyongyang nuclear envoy was killed — but he turned up on TV days later. It would not have been the first killing from the top, but it turned out to be another false report.
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Living in the crosshairs
High-profile defector Hwang Jang Yop survived numerous assassination attempts before dying of natural causes at the age of 87. Hwang, who had been one of the leading ideologues of the North's isolationist regime, escaped to South Korea in 1997. Just months before his death in 2010, Seoul authorities arrested two North Korean military officers over one of many plots to kill him.
Image: AP
Uncle not 'fed to the dogs'
The execution of Kim Jong Un's uncle Jang Song Thaek, once the second most powerful man in the isolated country, sent shock waves beyond North Korea's borders. Many media outlets wrongly reported that he was fed to hungry dogs, as punishment for his "betrayal" of the ruling family. In reality, he was shot, according to Pyongyang officials and South Korean intelligence.
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Rumors of brutality
In 2015, Seoul's security services reported that North Korean Defense Minister Hyon Yong Chol was executed by an anti-aircraft gun. However, National Intelligence Service (NIS) soon appeared to backtrack from the report, saying that Hyon might still be alive. Reports of other brutal executions, involving artillery shells and flamethrowers, have also been difficult to confirm.
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Poisoned needle
North Korean defector and well-known dissident Park Sang Hak was also targeted by a Pyongyang-linked hitman. In 2011, South Korean authorities arrested a former North Korean commando over the plot to assassinate Park with a poison-tipped needle.
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Removing a rival?
The estranged half-brother of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un was reportedly poisoned by two women at a Kuala Lumpur airport. While details remained sketchy, it was widely believed the killers were sent by the North Korean regime. The 46-year-old Kim Jong Nam had been living abroad after falling from grace in 2001 for visiting Disneyland in Tokyo.
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North Korean diplomacy
"This is very much a typical approach to diplomacy that the North employs, demanding more and more before it makes any concessions – and as soon as the other side does make concession, then demanding even more," said James Brown, an associate professor at Tokyo's Temple University.
"For Pyongyang, there is no sense of quid pro quo; it is all about the opposition giving and then asking for more," he told DW.
"There has clearly been a lot of very positive news coming out of the peninsula in recent weeks, and I have seen polls in which a majority of South Koreans now see Kim in a positive light, but it is clear that the regime there has not changed one bit and these people are being used simply as pawns," he added.
And even the recent thawing of ties between the two Koreas has not been enough to convince all North Koreans to await a positive outcome, with two defectors picked up in a small boat by a South Korean navy warship in the Yellow Sea on Saturday morning. One of the two is a member of the North Korean military and the defections were the first directly into South Korean territory since April.
Pyongyang has reportedly stepped up patrols on its heavily fortified border with South Korea as well as its more open frontier with China in an effort to stop defectors, while there have also been reports of punishments being increased for anyone caught attempting to flee. The Liberty Korea Post web site has also reported that North Korea sentenced 24 defectors to death for continuing a campaign against Pyongyang from exile, such as by sending propaganda into the North.
The Kim family has ruled North Korea for the last seven decades, with state-run propaganda praising Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un as godlike figures. DW looks at the rulers behind the myths.
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A young leader
Kim Il Sung, the first and "eternal" president of North Korea, took power in 1948 with the support of the Soviet Union. The official calendar in North Korea begins with his birth year, 1912, designating it "Juche 1" after the state's Juche ideology. He was 41 when, as shown here, he signed the 1953 armistice that effectively ended the Korean War.
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Hero worship
In the years and decades after the war, Pyongyang's propaganda machine worked hard to weave a mythical narrative around Kim Il Sung. His childhood and the time he spent fighting Japanese troops in the 1930s were embellished to portray him as an unrivaled military and political genius.
At the 1980 party congress, Kim announced he would be succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Il.
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Ruling to the end
In 1992, Kim Il Sung started writing and publishing his memoirs, entitled "Reminiscences: With the Century." Describing his childhood, the North Korean leader claims that he first joined an anti-Japanese rally at 6 years old and became involved with the independence struggle at 8.
The memoirs remained unfinished at Kim Il Sung's death in 1994.
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In his father's footsteps
After spending years in the top tiers of the regime, Kim Jong Il took power after his father's death. Kim Jong Il's 16-year rule was marked by famine and economic crisis in an already impoverished country. However, the cult of personality surrounding him and his father, Kim Il Sung, grew even stronger.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/KCNA via Korean News Service
Rising star
Historians outside North Korea believe Kim Jong Il was born in a military camp in eastern Russia, most likely in 1941. However, the leader's official biography claims it happened on the sacred Korean mountain Paektu, exactly 30 years after his father, on April 15, 1942. A North Korean legend says the birth was blessed by a new star and a double rainbow.
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Family trouble
Kim Jong Il had three sons and two daughters with three different women. This 1981 photo shows Kim Jong Il sitting besides his son Kim Jong Nam, with his sister-in-law and her two children in the background. Kim Jong Nam was eventually assassinated in 2017.
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Grooming a successor
In 2009, Western media reported that Kim Jong Il had picked his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, to take over as the head of the regime. The two appeared together at a military parade on 2010, a year before Kim Jong Il passed away.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/V. Yu
Together
According to Pyongyang, the death of Kim Jong Il in 2011 was marked by a series of mysterious events. State media reported that ice snapped loudly at a lake on the Paektu mountain during a sudden snowstorm, with a glowing message appearing on the rocks.
After Kim Jong Il's death, a 22-meter (72-foot) statue of him was erected next to the one of his father (l.) in Pyongyang.
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Mysterious past
Kim Jong Un mostly stayed out of the spotlight before his ascent to power. His exact age is disputed, but he is believed to have been born between 1982 and 1984. He was reportedly educated in Switzerland. In 2013, he surprised the world by meeting with former NBA star Dennis Rodman in Pyongyang.
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A new cult
Like the leaders before him, Kim Jong Un is hallowed by the state's totalitarian regime. In 2015, South Korean media reported about a new teacher's manual in the North that claimed Kim Jong Un could drive at the age of 3. In 2017, state media said that a monument to the young leader would be build on Mount Paektu.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/Kctv
A Kim with a hydrogen bomb
Altough Kim took power at a younger age and with less of a public profile than his father and grandfather, he has managed to maintain his grip on power. The assassination of his half-brother Kim Jong Nam in 2017 served to cement his reputation abroad as a merciless dictator. The North Korean leader has also vastly expanded the country's nuclear arsenal.
Image: picture-alliance/AP/A. Young-joon
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Fear, anger among defectors
The result is fear and anger among the defector community in the South, says Song Young-chae, a member of the Seoul-based Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea.
"A lot of defectors and the groups that support them are very angry at the South Korean government's attitude because they are failing to protect them," he said. "My defector friends say claims that the 13 restaurant workers from China were forced to come to South Korea is ridiculous."
"They are here of their own free will – but if any of them are sent back to the North then there is a very high likelihood that they will be killed," said Song, who is also a professor at the Center for Global Creation and Collaboration at Seoul's Sangmyung University.
"To many people, it looks as if the South Korean government is simply agreeing to every North Korean demand and defectors here are very nervous," he said. "Many of us are calling on the international community to protect defectors and also the people who are in the political prison camps in the North," Song added.
"President Donald Trump must raise this issue with Kim when he meets him in Singapore," he said. "There can be no agreement without the North improving its human rights."
Song noted that some of his defector contacts have been so concerned after hearing that the North had passed death sentences on some who have fled the regime and reports in another state-run newspaper that said all defectors would be punished for their actions that many are seeking to leave South Korea for the safety of a third country.
Brown agrees that the aggressive demands that the North is making of the South will inevitably be of serious concern to the defectors.
"Of course, they will be wondering if they are safe," he said. "Moon is under great pressure and clearly wants the talks with the North to resume and succeed, but he built his reputation on being a lawyer for human rights so I doubt he will actually order the repatriation of any defectors."
"I imagine that Pyongyang has reached a similar conclusion, so they will soon ask for something else instead," he suggested.
And because that request will be more palatable than sending defectors back to a deeply uncertain future, the South may give in to that request. And then, Brown expects, they will make another demand to test Seoul's resolve.
