North Korea Employs ‘Tailing Squads’ to Nab Defectors to China
North Korea’s State Security Department has been operating special squads proficient in Chinese to track down and arrest defectors who are hiding out in China, sources inside North Korea said.
Disguised as Chinese security agents, a “tailing squad” and an “arrest squad” are ferreting out North Korean defectors by searching the homes of the Chinese who are providing them shelter, they said.
A family of five surnamed Kim was sent back to North Korea after they were arrested on Wednesday by State Security Department agents in a rural village in Yanbian, the Korean autonomous region in China, three days after they crossed the Tumen River, which separates the two countries, they said.
The Kim family lived in a village in Sambongri, a small town in Musan County in North Hamgyong province.
“They [the family members] were abducted by a tailing squad operated by the State Security Department and an arrest squad in plainclothes,” a source from the province told RFA’s Korean Service. “The tailing squad disguised as Chinese security agents stormed the house of the Chinese man who had been sheltering the Kim family.”
Security department personnel in Onsung County jailed the family and would soon send them to a political prison camp, he said.
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