By Jun Ji-hye



A chain of recent defections by North Koreans indicate that the country is becoming more unstable under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, officials and experts said Tuesday.



The Ministry of Unification confirmed, Tuesday, "a few" North Korean restaurant workers recently deserted their workplace in China. The confirmation came a day after local media reported that two or three female North Koreans moved to Thailand after leaving their restaurant in either Xian or Shanghai with eventual plans to come to South Korea.



The latest incident followed the mass defection in early April by a group of 13 North Koreans who fled from a restaurant operated by Pyongyang in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, northeast China.



Experts say that the North handpicks workers who are loyal to the regime and have high social status before sending them overseas to work at the restaurants. The increasing defections among those chosen mean that doubts among the elite about the North Korean system have been growing amid tougher international sanctions.



They say that the sanctions following the North's fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch the following month, as well as Seoul telling South Koreans not to visit North Korean restaurants overseas, appear to have been effective.



"It is a fact that North Koreans have recently fled from an overseas restaurant," said a unification ministry official on the condition of anonymity. "But we cannot confirm anything about their current situation."



The official said that the April defection may have affected the latest one, adding that the government is seeking to verify relevant information.



Some observers said that continuous defections of those with high social status might be a prelude to the possible collapse of the Kim regime.



Ahn Chan-il, head of the World North Korea Research Center, said that they may have decided to flee to the South because they believed that the North Korean system cannot be maintained much longer.



"The restaurant staff might have undergone a change of mind as they listened to reports of things taking place in the world beyond North Korea," Ahn said.



The isolated state has operated as many as 130 restaurants in 12 countries, including China, Vietnam and Cambodia, as a means to earn hard currency that is suspected of being used to help bankroll Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.



Following stronger sanctions imposed in early March by the United Nations Security Council as well as major nations, including the United States, such restaurants have faced hardship, according to South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS).



The NIS noted that some 20 North Korean restaurants in China and the United Arab Emirates have shut down or suspended their operations.



One defector, who was among 13 North Koreans who fled to the South last month, reportedly testified that they decided to defect as they thought there was no more hope for the North Korean system amid the tougher international sanctions.



Sources said that complaints among restaurant staff had grown even more ahead of the Seventh Workers' Party Congress as the Kim regime kept pressuring them to send more money back to the North in preparation for the event despite the restaurants' financial difficulties.



The four-day-long congress, held 36 years after the last one took place in 1980 under Kim Il-sung, was wrapped up May 9.



Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University, noted that the strengthened crackdown by the Kim regime on some 5,000 restaurant staff working aboard in the wake of the April's mass defection might also have been one of the reasons for the additional defection.



"The North is expected to tighten monitoring restaurant staff to prevent further defections," he said. "There is also the possibility that the regime will reduce the number of female workers dispatched to overseas restaurants."



Pyongyang, meanwhile, has claimed that South Korea kidnapped the group of North Koreans who defected to Seoul last month. It has called for Seoul to permit their North Korean family members to have a face-to-face meeting with them.



On Tuesday, the North's propaganda media called on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is scheduled to visit Korea today, to support efforts to repatriate the defectors.



