North Korea on Friday paraded a defector accused of involvement in a child abduction plot it says was masterminded by South Korean agents.
In a carefully stage-managed press conference in Pyongyang, Ko Hyon-Chol, 53, "confessed" to attempting to kidnap two North Korean girl orphans and take them to the South.
"I committed the unpardonable crime of being involved in attempted child abduction," a weeping Ko told the press conference attended by foreign media and diplomats.
Ko's case follows the April defection to the South of a dozen North Korean women working in a restaurant in China.
Pyongyang insists that the women were kidnapped by the South's spy agency — the National Intelligence Service (NIS) — but Seoul says they fled of their own free will.