SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- Police charged a businessman and his girlfriend Saturday with trying to defect to communist North Korea in a bid to avoid fraud charges at home.

Businessman Kim Hak-hee, 48, and his girlfriend Lee Soo-ok, 39, who fled South Korea in 1993, met North Korean embassy officials in Singapore on December 14 to arrange their defection through Beijing, authorities said.

Kim and Lee were captured Tuesday by Interpol in Malaysia at the Kuala Lumpur airport while stopping for a transit flight for Beijing. They were extradited to South Korea, police said.

The two Koreas remain bitter enemies after their 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty. It is illegal for citizens from the two Koreas to enter the other side without government permission.

Charged with fraud at home, Kim had been chased across Asia by South Korean authorities and Interpol. Kim and Lee fled to Indonesia in 1993 after Kim's small trading company went bankrupt.

About 200 North Koreans have escaped to South Korea in the past three years, reporting widespread hunger in the isolated country. But it is rare for a South Korean to defect to the North.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.