North Korea’s deputy ambassador in London has defected with his family to South Korea, making him the highest-ranking Pyongyang diplomat ever to flee the regime for the democratic South, South Korea said yesterday
The Unification Ministry in Seoul declined to say when or how Thae Yong-ho and his family arrived in Seoul, or how many relatives accompanied him.
Thae defected due to discontent with the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and for the future of his child, ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee told a news conference.
It was not clear in Korean whether Jeong was referring to more than one child.
“We know that Deputy Ambassador Thae is saying that his distaste for the Kim Jong-un regime and yearning for the Republic of Korea’s free democratic system and the future of his child are motives for the defection,” Jeong said, adding that Thae and his family were under government protection.
The announcement came a day after media report that a high-profile North Korean diplomat, later identified by the BBC as Thae, had defected.
Quoting an unnamed source, South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper had said the diplomat embarked on a defection journey “following a scrupulous plan” and was in the process of “landing in a third country as an asylum seeker.”
The newspaper said that he had been under pressure from Pyongyang to combat growing international criticism of North Korea’s human rights record.
An official at the North Korean embassy in London on Tuesday would not confirm the defection, describing reports of the event as “quite sudden.”
“If it is appropriate to give a response, then you might hear about our response,” the official said.
Further calls to the embassy went unanswered. Calls to Thae’s mobile phone were redirected to a voicemail inbox.
The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office did not have an immediate comment after South Korea’s announcement.
Thae’s defection follows a string of recent such flights by North Koreans, including 12 waitresses at a North Korean restaurant in China who defected earlier this year.
Those waitresses have finished a prolonged period of investigation and have entered into normal society, a Unification Ministry official said yesterday.
Several diplomats from North Korea have defected to the South over the last two years, including one from Thailand, the Yonhap news agency reported yesterday, citing a source familiar with North Korean affairs.
Overall, the number of defectors, mostly from the area near the North’s border with China, has declined since Kim took power following his father’s death in 2011.
Thae was well-known to the British media, acting as the embassy’s main point of contact for British correspondents travelling to Pyongyang.
Thae lived at or near the North Korean embassy, which is in the leafy west London suburb of Gunnersbury.
He spoke regularly at far-left events in London, including meetings of a British Communist Party where he would make impassioned speeches in defense of North Korea, according to videos of the events.
Thae’s son, Thae Kum-hyok, who was known as “Kum Thae,” was a pupil at Acton High School, a short walk from the embassy.
The school term ended on July 22, according its Web site, around the same time the elder Thae is believed to have defected.
The son, 19, has a place at Imperial College, London, to study math and computer science, according to one of his school friends cited by the Guardian newspaper.
Debonair and well-spoken, Thae Yong-ho has more than 10 years experience working on UK and EU-related issues as a diplomat.
He is cited in European Parliament archives as a London-based diplomat joining a North Korean delegation to Brussels.
Additional reporting by AFP
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