NORTH KOREA: DEFECTORS EXECUTED OR SENT TO LABOR CAMP

December 2, 2014: South Korean newspaper The Dong-A Ilbo reported Park Sun-young, chairman of civic group Dream Makers for North Korea, as saying that “out of nine young North Korean defectors who were deported from Laos back to North Korea in May [2013], two were executed and seven were sent to a labor camp.”
“Two were executed in August or September this year [2014] and one of them was Mun Chol, 24. The other seven were imprisoned to the labor camp 14 in Gaechon, North Korea this spring,” Park said, citing information “heard from a cooperative source in North Korea.”
On 3 June 2013, Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), had said he was "extremely concerned" that nine North Korean defectors, including five children, were forcibly repatriated by Laos and China, facing imprisonment, and even execution, for attempting to escape from the regime. The defectors, all believed to be orphans aged between 15 and 23, fled North Korea in April and entered Laos via China on 9 May. A week later they were detained by the Laotian authorities and forced on to a plane back to China. The Chosun Ilbo newspaper, in Seoul, cited unidentified government officials as saying seven males and two females were flown home via China on 27 May, despite a request from Seoul that Beijing not repatriate them. (Sources: english.donga.com, 02/12/2014; theguardian.com, 03/06/2013)