A North Korean restaurant in China.[Yonhap News Photo]
North Korea has sent about 800 security agents to areas bordering China in a bid to beef up monitoring on the North's foreign workers and prevent them from fleeing their posts, a source familiar with the move said Monday.
China's authorities have raised their guard against North Korea's move to dispatch hundreds of agents to Chinese cities, including Dandong and Yenji, where tens of thousands of North Koreans are working, according to the source.
The North Korean agents, who belong to the Ministry of State Security or the North's reconnaissance bureau tasked with carrying out espionage missions, are intensifying their monitoring of workers employed at North Korea-run restaurants and Chinese companies, the observer claimed.
In April, 13 North Koreans working at a Pyongyang-run restaurant in the Chinese eastern port city of Ningbo defected to South Korea en masse. In June, three more North Korean restaurant employees working in China escaped to Seoul.
(Yonhap)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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