Unification Minister Chung Dong-young declared Tuesday that Seoul will stop allowing large groups of North Korean defectors to enter South Korea, saying that government has no desire to undermine the communist country's leadership. ``The North's perception that we are trying to shake the Pyongyang regime by bringing defectors to Seoul is quite different from our policy,'' Chung said during an MBC radio interview. ``We disapprove of the mass defections. There will be no more large-scale arrivals of defectors in Seoul.'' | "We got ours; screw 'em." |
North Korea has repeatedly accused Seoul of kidnapping defectors in a bid to destabilize the Pyongyang government. It boycotted scheduled inter-Korean meetings following the airlifting of 468 North Koreans to Seoul from an unidentified Southeast Asian nation in July — the largest mass defection to the South yet. Human rights activists said the government is now seeking to appease Pyongyang by reducing the inflow of defectors. ``This is a really bad decision in terms of human rights and saving the lives of North Korean refugees,'' said Kwon Un-kyong, assistant secretary for the Seoul-based Democracy Network Against North Korean Gulag.