A photo captured from UNITV shows the North Korean workers walking at an unknown location.

A team of international lawyers is pushing to visit Pyongyang in September to investigate a high-profile 2016 defection of a dozen North Korean restaurant workers, its representative said Tuesday.

Two organizations — the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) and the Confederation of Lawyers of Asia and the Pacific — are planning to form a joint probe team to investigate if any human rights were violated in the process of their defection, said Micol Savia, a representative of the IADL at the United Nations.

The 12 North Korean waitresses working at a restaurant in Ningpo, a city in the Chinese province of Zhejiang, defected to the South in 2016, along with a manager. In an unusual move, South Korean authorities immediately released the news of the massive defection, five days ahead of general elections.

The investigation team plans to meet the defectors, as well as South Korean authorities, in Seoul in late August and travel to the North Korean capital to meet the defectors’ families and other restaurant staff who did not flee to the South.

The organizations are in talks with a Pyongyang-based lawyers’ group to coordinate details of their trip. A member of the IADL, the North Korean lawyers’ group is known to have received approval from the authorities regarding the probe team’s planned visit.

Savia said they plan to formally raise the issue if any acts of human rights infringement are confirmed during their investigation.

(Yonhap)