As already known, the DPRK side sent notices to the south side several times, urging it to repatriate all the crewmen without delay, and their families strongly demanded a face-to-face interview with them.

However, the puppet regime has refused to send back three of them under absurd pretext of "defection."

In this regard, a spokesman for the Central Committee of the DPRK Red Cross Society made public a statement Tuesday, which branded the detention as an unpardonable grave encroachment on the sovereignty of the DPRK and the rights of its citizens and another hideous provocation.

In the past the DPRK sent back all south Korean fishermen and ships drifted toward its territorial waters, irrespective of reason and, in particular, it persuaded some of them eager to live in it to go back home, an expression of noble humanitarianism and compatriotism, the statement recalled, saying:

But the south Korean puppet group illegally detained citizens of the DPRK, forcing them to "defect", and refused even to provide data on their situation and arrange an interview with their families. This is a vivid expression of its rude act against human rights.

It is unjust and irritating that relatives are forced to separate from each other in peacetime, not in wartime.

Now the puppet group advertise about the "will to defect" in order to quell the public criticism and protest at home and abroad against the detaining of DPRK citizens. But it can never cover up the truth about its heinous crime against the nation and humanitarianism that violated even the elementary morality.

The "defection" farce is an extension of the group's persistent anti-DPRK policy getting more reckless day by day, and it is a deliberate and premeditated provocation to justify the story about someone's "instability of social system", impair the high prestige of the DPRK and worsen the north-south relations.

The puppet group should stop at once the anti-DPRK smear campaign precipitating its ruin and send back the illegally detained DPRK citizens without delay and any condition, clearly mindful of the catastrophic aftermath to be entailed by such provocation.