The controversy surrounds Jo Song Gil, the former North Korean envoy to Rome, who disappeared with his wife last November while working in the Italian capital.
A South Korean newspaper has reported the couple have applied for political asylum in an unspecified Western country.
Thae Yong Ho, a former deputy North Korean ambassador to London who defected to South Korea in 2016, said on Tuesday that Gil could not take his 17-year-old daughter with him when he fled.
Citing his contacts in North Korea, Thae said the teenager had been forced back to Pyongyang by a special squad of North Korean intelligence services, in retaliation to her father’s alleged betrayal.
In a post on Facebook, Manilo Di Stefano, undersecretary at the Italian Foreign Ministry, demanded information about the girl’s disappearance.
“Those responsible for this will pay,” he wrote.
Shortly afterwards, Di Stefano’s own ministry issued a statement saying they had been informed by North Korea on December 5, 2018, that Jo and his wife had left the embassy on November 10 and that their daughter had been repatriated on November 14.
The statement said the girl had requested to go back to her grandparents and had been accompanied by female staff from the North Korean embassy.
“The ministry does not have any further information about this affair,” the statement continued.
Di Stefano, a member of the ruling Star Movement (M5S), said Italy should have protected the girl.
“She now risks being tortured by one of the worst regimes in the world,” he wrote.
The incident has heightened tensions between the M5S and its coalition partner, the anti-immigration League.
M5S members demanded that Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini, who is also interior minister and head of the League, should brief lawmakers in relation to the girl’s disappearance.
Salvini dodged the issue while speaking on Rai radio on Thursday.
“Ask the foreign ministry, it’s an issue involving embassies,” he said.
“I didn’t know anything about it, I have nothing to do with it.”
Salvini added that he would not meet the request from M5S members to report to parliament on the case.
“If the girl wanted to go back to her grandparents in her own country, took a scheduled flight and was relaxed at the airport, going through the police checks and checking in without saying anything, what has it got to do with the interior minister?” Salvini said.
“What should I report on?”
