VLADIVOSTOK, June 7. /TASS/. Russian investigators have launched a criminal case into the disappearance of a mother and her son, presumably family members of a North Korean diplomat, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement on its website on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, social networks circulated a call to Vladivostok residents to assist in the search of two citizens of North Korea, a mother and a son. Some media claimed that those missing persons were family members of a diplomatic worker from North Korea’s Consulate General in Russia's Far Eastern city of Vladivostok. The police and the Rusisan Investigative Committee did not officially confirm this information. Later, an informed source told TASS that "the wife and son of the DPRK’s consul general in Vladivostok are fine, they have not disappeared." "The media outlets had wrong information," the source added.

The Russian Investigative Committee published the following statement on Wednesday: "Some mass media outlets have published reports about the disappearance of a woman and her 15-year-old son in the Primorye Region on June 4, 2023. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has launched a criminal case into this fact."

Russian Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin tasked the head of the Primorye Region Investigative Department to make a report about the investigation and its outcome. The committee’s central office has taken the case under its control.