The kidnapping of the 17-year-old daughter of North Korean diplomat in Rome made Italian government to start the investigation, however, its results didn’t satisfy the United Nations. That case earned Italy a rebuke from the UN, a lawsuit for “aggravated kidnapping”, and a confidence vote in the interior minister at the time.
North Korea may have abducted the teenage daughter of its former ambassador to Italy after her father defected, The Local Italy reported on Friday. Italy’s foreign minister Enzo Moavero said that Rome was looking into accusations made by another North Korean defector that the 17-year-old daughter of acting ambassador Jo Song-Gil was forcibly returned to the authoritarian country after the diplomat fled his post late last December.
According to the investigation conducted by the Italian government, ambassador Jo and his spouse have not been seen since he abruptly left the embassy in Rome in November. Their teenage daughter was abducted before she could join her parents, another former diplomat claimed this week.
“I do not know for sure how many children Jo had, but the one who stayed in Italy has been sent back to North Korea,” the country’s former deputy ambassador to the UK, Thae Yong-Ho, who defected in 2016, told the South Korean news agency Yonhap.
The deputy foreign minister Manlio Di Stefano promised to find those who responsible for kidnapping a minor and to punish. Kidnapping a teenage on Italian soil is a case of unprecedented seriousness, he added. The reports prompted Italian lawmakers to call for an explanation from Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, head of the League party that governs in coalition with the Five Star Movement.
“Ask the foreign minister,” Salvini told reporters on Thursday. “I didn’t know anything about it… It’s a problem of relations between embassies.”
