On June 22 five DPRK residents went fishing aboard the fishing boat in the East Sea of Korea. But the boat drifted toward the area of the south side due to the worsening of weather condition and engine trouble.

In the morning of Tuesday the puppet group detained three of five DPRK residents and sent back two residents through Panmunjom.

Unable to meet their husband and sons, the families and their relatives staged a protest action at Panmunjom, enraged at the puppet group's human rights abuse.

There took place on the spot an interview with the families and relatives of the detained residents and those repatriated.

It is sheer nonsense that their kinsmen betrayed the DPRK, the families and relatives said, denouncing the puppet group for ruining the harmonious families and separating parents, wives and children while refusing to arrange even a face-to-face meeting with them.

The repatriated residents disclosed the fact that the puppet authorities segregated them from each other and made desperate efforts to force them to "defect" through allurement, blackmail, appeasement and deception, though they demanded an early repatriation to the DPRK where their kinsmen are eagerly waiting for them.

The families and relatives of the detained residents issued a written protest addressed to the south Korean authorities.

It said that the "defection" of their dear kinsmen is an intrigue and fabrication cooked up by the south Korean authorities.

With no rhetoric can the south Korean authorities justify their heinous crimes to separate from families those residents who suffered from unexpected disaster in peacetime, not in wartime, it charged.

If they have an iota of conscience and truly want national concord and reunification, they should send back the detained residents to their parents, wives and children immediately and unconditionally, it stressed.