A high-ranking North Korean diplomat stationed in Cuba defected to South Korea in November last year — just months before Seoul and Havana established diplomatic ties, the South Korean National Intelligence Service said yesterday.
North Korean diplomat Ri Il-kyu had been responsible for political affairs at Pyongyang’s embassy in Cuba since 2019, tasked specifically “with obstructing the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Cuba,” South Korea’s Chosun Daily reported.
Ri defected to South Korea with his wife and children in early November, making him the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat known to have defected since then-North Korean deputy ambassador to the UK Thae Yong-ho did so in 2016, the report said.
Photo: AP
It was “true” there had been a “defection of the counselor of political affairs from the North Korean embassy in Cuba,” the National Intelligence Service said, without giving further details.
The South Korean Ministry of Unification has previously flagged a rising number of defections by North Korean elites, which it said made up about 10 of the 196 defections last year, the highest number in years.
About three months after Ri’s reported defection, Seoul and Havana — which is one of Pyongyang’s oldest allies, and a fellow communist state — announced they were establishing diplomatic ties.
In an interview with South Korea’s Chosun Daily, Ri said he decided to defect after Pyongyang rejected his request to seek medical treatment in Mexico after an injury, even though he could not receive the necessary treatment in Cuba due to a lack of specialist equipment.
He also said he had received unfair performance reviews after rejecting a senior North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs official’s demand for bribes when he visited Pyongyang in August 2019 to discuss opening a North Korean restaurant in Cuba.
“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea,” he told the Chosun Daily. “Disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future led me to consider defection.”
Ri also told the newspaper that former North Korean minister of foreign affairs Ri Yong-ho and his family had been sent to a political prisoner camp in December 2019 on “suspicion of corruption,” over a bribery case involving the country’s embassy in Beijing.
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