North Korea denied allegations of abducting the crewmembers and passengers of a Korean Air Lines flight hijacked in 1969, according to a document made public on the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights website.

The letter from the Permanent Mission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the United Nations Office and Other International Organizations in Geneva, sent on Feb. 24 to the U.N. agency, was made public on Monday, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

The U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances had sent a notice to the Pyongyang mission in February, urging the Kim Jong Un regime to repatriate 11 people taken to North Korea following the hijacking.

North Korea denied the kidnappings and charges of rights abuses in the letter made available to the public this week.

"The allegations of 'abduction' of crew members and passengers who were on board south Korean Air Lines flight YS-11 contained in a joint communication are the extension of the stereotyped despicable political plots fabricated by the hostile forces aimed at overthrowing the [North Korean] system using human rights as a pretext," the letter read.

"Therefore [North Korea] categorically rejects such allegations, which have no worthy for consideration and revealed itself of its absurdity at the previous U.N. human rights fora."

The North Korean mission also said if the U.N. group "really cares about [the] protection of human rights" they should focus on confirming the "fate and whereabouts of [North Korean] citizens abducted to the South."

In 2016, 12 North Korean waitresses and their manager traveled to the South. Seoul said the group defected voluntarily, but the manager later accused Seoul of premeditating the mass defection. None of the waitresses have been repatriated.

North Korea has previously denied holding any South Korean citizen in detention, according to South Korean news service Seoul Pyongyang News.

In early May, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled a South Korean citizen abducted in 1969 on the KAL flight, Hwang Won, is a victim of arbitrary detention.

Hwang's son in the South, Hwang In-cheol, has said his father is alive. WGAD has said the continued arbitrary detention of Hwang Won is in violation of Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Copyright 2020 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent., source International Top News