Officials: 6 South Korean returnees sneaked to North Korea hoping for better lives

Six South Koreans recently repatriated from North Korea had sneaked into the North in search of better lives but ended up detained for up to 45 months for illegal entry, Seoul officials said Monday.

South Koreans defecting to impoverished, totalitarian North Korea is rare. On the other hand, more than 25,000 North Koreans have fled to the South for political and economic reasons since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. The two Koreas bar their ordinary citizens from freely travelling to each other, and in September South Korean soldiers shot and killed one of their citizens they thought was trying to cross into North Korea at the border.

North Korea sent back the six men and a woman's corpse Friday in an unusual action seen as an attempt to improve strained ties between the rival countries after Pyongyang's abrupt cancellations of reunions of families separated by war last month. Tension spiked dramatically this past spring over North Korea's repeated threats of nuclear wars.

A South Korean security official said Monday that the men told investigators they entered North Korea between 2009 and 2012 by walking over frozen rivers from China, or swimming after jumping off a Chinese cruise ship on a border river.

The men had vague hopes that they could have better lives in North Korea after suffering business failures and family troubles, or engaging in pro-North Korea activities in South Korea, said the official who requested anonymity because an investigation was underway.

One person who posted pro-North Korea online messages believed he would be treated better in North Korea after finding his pen name was introduced at the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the official said.

The six men were eventually separately detained in North Korea for 14-45 months for questioning. One of them said he had never been allowed to get out of his solitary confinement, while another said he didn't get medical treatment for his kidney stone, according to the South Korean official.

The official quoted one of the men as saying that he strangled his wife and later tried to kill himself. Seoul officials earlier cited North Korea as saying the woman died in a quarrel with her husband.

South Korean authorities were seeking a court warrant to formally arrest the six men, who are aged between 27 and 67, for a more thorough investigation, the official said. In South Korea, anyone who defects to North Korea can be punished by up to 10 years in prison under the country's anti-Pyongyang security law.

The results of a preliminary investigation were anonymously provided to South Korea media, and another South Korean official confirmed the substance of the reports.

Seoul estimates that hundreds of South Koreans have been kidnapped and detained by North Korea since the Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.