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North Korean joins race for S Korean parliament

A North Korean who escaped from his communist homeland eight years ago is running for South Korea's parliament in what he claims is the first such bid, election officials said yesterday.

Yoon Seung-gil, 38, who came to South Korea in 2000, last week registered to stand in the April general election, the National Election Commission said.

In a brief biography posted on the commission's Web site, Yoon introduces himself as a former high school dropout who is now head of a North Korean food research institute in the South.

"Yoon says he is the first North Korean defector ever to run for the parliamentary elections here," commission spokesman Woo Jae-yong said.

The spokesman said the commission could not confirm the claim because North Korean defectors usually do not publicize their status for the safety of relatives left in the North.

More than 10,000 North Koreans have fled to the prosperous South since the end of the 1950 to 1953 Korean War, the vast majority in recent years.

Yoon told Yonhap news agency late on Monday that he hoped to "increase public awareness of the need to prepare for Korean reunification" through his candidacy.

Yoon hopes to stand for the conservative Grand National Party, usually critical of the regime in Pyongyang, in a southwestern district of the capital where he now lives.

He had lived in Pyongyang before being forced to move to the North's northeastern town of Onseong after his family was politically purged, Yonhap said.

It said he now makes a living providing consulting services to South Koreans who want to run North Korean-style restaurants, which are gradually becoming more popular in the South.

Yoon hopes to raise election funds from fellow North Korean refugees.
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