North Korea has accused South Korea of abducting three North Korean female restaurant employees in China, demanding their immediate repatriation.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency(KCNA) on Friday reported of a statement released a day earlier by a spokesperson of the North’s Red Cross, in which the Pyongyang claimed that it was another systematic and nasty abduction scheme by Seoul's National Intelligence Service(NIS) following the abduction of 13 other North Koreans in April.

It is the first official response from the North since three female North Korean workers in a Pyongyang-run restaurant in the central Chinese city of Xian were reported to have defected to the South.

The North’s Red Cross spokesperson claimed that the NIS agents who disguised as an ordinary citizens approached the North Korean workers a long time ago in order to kidnap them, saying the North has sufficient evidence to prove it.

The South has said the defection of three North Koreans was done voluntarily, like the one by 13 North Korean workers, who fled from a North Korean restaurant in Ningbo, China in April.