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SEOUL, May 24 (UPI) -- South Korea confirmed reports that a small group of North Korean waitresses fled a state-run restaurant in China in May. Seoul's foreign ministry spokesman Cho Joon-hyuk said Tuesday that the defection of "three North Korean workers from an overseas restaurant is true," local news service News 1 reported.
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Cho did not disclose the exact location of the restaurant and where the waitresses went to apply for South Korean asylum.
On Monday, Jang Jin-sung, a defector and founder of New Focus International, had told reporters the North Koreans left from a state-run restaurant near Shanghai.
The defections occurred on May 10, immediately after the end of North Korea's Seventh Party Congress, South Korean news network MBN reported.
The waitresses traveled by land carrying only bare necessities through China and Laos to reach Thailand. They probably did not have access to their passports, according to the report.
A source who spoke to MBN on the condition of anonymity said North Korean overseas workers are under heavy pressure from the Kim Jong Un regime to fill income quotas.
If restaurants do not earn enough income, North Korean security agents come to warn the workers and they cannot avoid penalties once they are repatriated to North Korea, according to the source.
The location of the restaurant from where the waitresses defected has not been confirmed, but some South Korean reports have suggested they left from a restaurant in Xi'an in central China, rather than a Shanghai location.
A North Korean restaurant in the Pudong district of Shanghai was operating as usual, Yonhap reported Tuesday.
Two waitresses at the restaurant said there have been "no problems" with operations and that they had "never heard" of the recent defections.
