UPDATE - Seoul offers extra protection to NKorean defectors

UPDATES WITH SUSPENSION OF HEARING

By Alex Jensen

SEOUL (AA) – South Korea's state intelligence agency is offering special protection to 13 North Korean defectors, it emerged Tuesday - as a legal hearing got underway at the instigation of local lawyers concerned about the group's well-being.

The unprecedented hearing at Seoul Central District Court was set to examine whether the South's National Intelligence Service (NIS) can legally block access to the defectors, who wish to remain protected according to the government.

However, Lawyers for a Democratic Society requested a new judging panel out of concern that the case would not be handled fairly, forcing the hearing to be suspended.

The lawyers' group has so far failed to get permission to meet with the defectors in question to check North Korea's recent claim that they were abducted under Seoul's orders - the group had worked at a restaurant in China before entering the South in April.

South Korea previously presented their escape as evidence that the North's grip on its people was loosening under the weight of new sanctions.

Since the 1990s, the South has officially welcomed around 30,000 North Koreans, who risked their lives by defying their authoritarian homeland's regime.

But the North was particularly upset by the reported escape of supposedly loyal subjects granted permission to work in China.

Now Seoul's NIS has risked further suspicion by detaining the group away from one of South Korea's established resettlement centers, where defectors typically spend three months learning how to adapt to a new life outside of the reclusive North.

"The NIS has notified the government that its decision was made for their security, given that the case is a high-profile defection and North Korea is using it as propaganda," a government official was quoted as saying by local news agency Yonhap.

Meanwhile, North Korea's state media has been publishing pleas from family members for their loved ones to be returned - although Pyongyang is notorious for its punishment of three generations of a family connected to a betrayal, a remnant of Korea's past Joseon Dynasty.