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
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
China has approved the creation of a national nature reserve at the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), claimed by Taiwan and the Philippines, the government said yesterday, as Beijing moves to reinforce its territorial claims in the contested region. A notice posted online by the Chinese State Council said that details about the area and size of the project would be released separately by the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration. “The building of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve is an important guarantee for maintaining the diversity, stability and sustainability of the natural ecosystem of Huangyan Island,” the notice said. Scarborough
RSS