UN requests confirmation of ”enforced and involuntarily disappeared persons”; North Korea refuses to confirm whether they are alive or dead

A UN agency that deals with enforced disappearances has designated missionary Choi Chung-gil, who has been forcibly detained in North Korea for more than 10 years, and North Korean defector Kim Chol-ok, who was forcibly repatriated to North Korea, as "victims of enforced disappearances."
However, North Korea has refused to confirm information about the two, claiming that forced and involuntary disappearances are acts of secretly harming North Korea.
The United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) recently published online a report from its 134th meeting (September 15-25, 2024) detailing the extent to which North Korean authorities are detaining people.
The letter states that the North Korean government has been conducting relief and missionary activities for North Korean defectors based in Dandong, China, since December 2014.
These cases include Choi, who was arrested by the bureau, and Kim, a North Korean defector who was forcibly repatriated from China to North Korea in October 2023.
To date, there has been no confirmation of whether the two are alive or dead.
Choi, who has been in detention for over 10 years, was sentenced to life-long hard labor in June 2015, and his whereabouts remain unknown. Kim will be found dead at Misha's house in Dehui, Changchun, Jilin Province, China on April 5, 2023.
He was presumably arbitrarily detained by Changbai Public Security Bureau officials at the rest area, and was subsequently forcibly repatriated to North Korea by Chinese authorities in October 2023.
Prior to this, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) had issued two summonses to Choi and Kim in November last year, respectively.
In March of this year, the North Korean government determined that the detention was illegal and called for the detainees' release. However, North Korea has not even confirmed whether the six South Korean detainees, including Choi, are alive or dead.
However, the WGEID, which was established in 1980, is said to have been involved in the arrest and detention of people by state agencies and organizations claiming to be state actors.
・It is an organization under the United Nations that deals with the issue of "enforced disappearances," which refers to cases in which people are abducted and their whereabouts and fate are concealed. It receives and examines reports of disappearances from the victim's family or private organizations, and then investigates those who are suspected of being the abductors.
Its role is to notify the relevant countries and request them to report clear findings.