Report alleges North Korea operates secret detention cell inside Beijing embassy

The Transitional Justice Working Group, a human-rights organization in Seoul, published a report accusing North Korea of maintaining a secret detention centre in the basement of its Beijing embassy. According to interviews, including a former North Korean diplomat, the site is run by a consular official who is in fact an intelligence officer and handles surveillance, arrest, interrogation and forced repatriation of regime opponents.

The study highlights the experience of hacker Pae Yong-ju, captured by Chinese police in Inner Mongolia, interrogated for months, transferred to the Shenyang consulate, and ultimately flown back to North Korea on an Air Koryo aircraft while confined to a wheelchair and cast. An informant later confirmed his death three years after repatriation. The report characterises the practice as a serious international crime and a breach of China’s due-process rights, urging global monitoring of Beijing’s handling of North Korean abuses.