Eight North Korean government officials have escaped over the border into China, including a typist who handled important documents for the ruling party and a number of communications experts.

A Radio Free Asia report claims that a further seven officials from Pyongyang were caught by state security officers in a village close to the border before they could defect.

It appears that the officials took advantage of the New Year holiday period to leave Pyongyang in groups of three or four and head north towards the border. The report suggested that the government employees may have been carrying secret information, perhaps to barter for their passage to South Korea.

A source in the North told RFA that the State Security Department realised that 15 government employees had gone missing on January 2 and immediately launched “an emergency operation” to arrest them. Underlining the importance of the would-be defectors, security officials flew to the border city of Samjiyon before locating seven people in a nearby village. The others had reportedly managed to cross the frontier a short while earlier.

The officials appear to have been senior and trusted members of the North Korean government and lived in the luxurious apartments set aside for the regime’s elite on Ryomyong Street and Mirae Scientists Street in the centre of Pyongyang.