Asia Times: Hong was warned to spout Pyongyang line 'or brother will die'



	March 27, 1999	atimes.com

The Koreas

Hong was warned to spout Pyongyang line 'or brother will die'
By Bradley Martin

Bangkok - Hong Won-myung, who was held hostage for two weeks by North Korean diplomats and then upon his release told a press conference he wished to return to North Korea, made such remarks to protect his family members from retaliation by the Pyongyang regime, a Thai newspaper reported Thursday - and he now wishes to defect with his parents to the United States.

His captors each day had him telephone his brother, in North Korea, who told him he should follow the North Korean officials' instructions or the brother and the brother's wife would come to serious harm, perhaps be killed, according to the account in the vernacular daily Naew Na. The paper attributed to unnamed Thai intelligence sources its version of what young Hong recounted privately after having been reunited with his parents.

His captors fed him his lines for the press conference, telling him they wanted to make sure North Korea's image would not be hurt further, the article said.

Naew Na's sources quoted Hong as saying his captors had tranquilized him and kept him in his underwear after the kidnapping. Using a carrot-and-stick approach, the account continues, besides the daily calls to his frightened brother, they promised him an elite career if he would do as he was told and return to Pyongyang: Hong, who is fluent in Thai and attended Bangkok's Assumption University, would be made a diplomat and dispatched to Bangkok in two years as a third secretary in the North Korean embassy here, they assured him.

The captors also offered to return cash amounting to some $100,000 and 200,000 Thai baht that they had seized when they broke into the family's apartment, according to the Naew Na account. Hong's father, a former North Korean diplomat, and his mother were also kidnapped at that same time, but the parents, riding in a separate car, managed to escape in the confusion surrounding an automobile accident.

Pyongyang alleges that the elder Hong stole $83 million that was supposed to be paid for imports of Thai rice, and has asked the Thai government to extradite him. The three family members are reported to be talking with officials representing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees about their wish to move to the United States.

(Asia Times Online)

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