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SEOUL: A North Korean who went missing in Nepal was a restaurant manager who defected and is now living in India, a South Korean newspaper reported Tuesday.
A local media report in the Himalayan country had said last week the man, surnamed Yang, may have been an intelligence official.
The South's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said he was in fact the manager of the local franchise of an overseas restaurant chain, operated by the North's regime and known as Pyongyang Okryugwan.
"Yang stayed in Kathmandu for about an year and managed the Okryugwan Nepal branch," it quoted a diplomatic source as saying.
"Yang is not simply missing but seems to have defected on his own free will" and is now in New Delhi, the source was quoted as saying.
Nepal's Republica newspaper said last week that two South Korean residents were arrested following pressure from Pyongyang's embassy in Kathmandu, which wants them charged with kidnapping Yang.
Police in Kathmandu have confirmed two South Koreans were detained but have given no reason.
The overseas restaurant franchises are an important source of scarce foreign currency for the cash-strapped regime, Chosun said.
It quoted speculation by intelligence officials that Yang may have absconded with a large sum in dollars, provoking a strong reaction by the North.
Some 20,000 North Koreans have fled their homeland and arrived in South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 war, almost always through a third country.
-AFP/ac
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