The dramatic US operation that deposed Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro this month might have left North Korean leader Kim Jong-un feeling he was also vulnerable to “decapitation,” a former Pyongyang envoy to Havana said.
Lee Il-kyu — who served as Pyongyang’s political counselor in Cuba from 2019 until 2023 — said that Washington’s lightning extraction in Caracas was a worst-case scenario for his former boss.
“Kim must have felt that a so-called decapitation operation is actually possible,” said Lee, who now works for a state-backed think tank in Seoul.
Photo: AFP
North Korea’s leadership has long accused Washington of seeking to remove it from power and said its nuclear and missile programs are needed as a deterrent against alleged regime change efforts by Washington.
However, the ex-diplomat, who defected to South Korea in November 2023, said that Maduro’s ouster would spark panic among North Korea’s security-obsessed leadership.
Kim would “overhaul the entire system regarding his security and countermeasures in case of an attack against him,” he said.
From his perch in Havana, a key backer of Maduro’s socialist regime in Caracas, Lee was charged with promoting the interests of the nuclear-armed state in Latin America.
He played a key role in high-profile negotiations, including securing the release of a North Korean vessel detained in Panama in 2013 — work for which he received a commendation from Kim himself.
One of his last missions was an ultimately doomed effort to prevent Cuba from forging diplomatic ties with its rival Seoul.
However, his deep frustration with the system led him to become one of the highest-level diplomats to defect in years.
“I was fed up,” he said.
Being denied opportunities after refusing to bribe a superior was the final straw, he said.
In a life-or-death moment for his family, he and his wife and daughter found themselves stuck at an airport in a Central American nation he asked not be named.
Despite his intention to defect, officials at the airport insisted he needed to board a plane bound for Venezuela, which would almost certainly have sent him back to Cuba. Cuban authorities would have been obliged to hand him over to North Korea — a death sentence.
“I physically struggled in desperation, trying to save my family, but it was not working,” he said.
His plea was accepted at last when a South Korean diplomat showed up, telling officials that Lee and his family were under the protection of Seoul.
“At that moment, all the officials disappeared,” he said. “Looking back, it was a moment that showed South Korea’s national strength.”
Lee is imploring South Korea to do the same for two North Korean prisoners of war captured by Ukraine — part of a cohort of thousands of troops sent by Pyongyang to assist Russia.
The two men wrote a letter expressing their desire to go to the South — a decision Lee said would be perceived by Pyongyang as an “utter act of betrayal.”
It is not immediately clear why they have not been sent to South Korea, with Seoul saying it is in consultations with Kyiv over the fate of men it considers its citizens.
“Under no circumstances should they be sent back to the North,” Lee said. “If they were to be repatriated it would be better to be dead than alive. Living would become an ordeal in itself for them.”
Seoul must take the lead in bringing them in, he said, an effort that also “requires the joint efforts of the international community and human rights groups.”
Since settling in South Korea, 53-year-old Lee has become an outspoken commentator on his homeland, writing regular columns for the country’s largest newspaper.
He has published a memoir in Japanese titled The Kim Jong Un I Witnessed with an English version also in the pipeline.
His time has coincided with some of the most tumultuous periods in South Korean politics in years, from former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol’s stunning martial law declaration in late 2024 to his impeachment and subsequent removal from office.
South Koreans then elected as president the progressive Lee Jae-myung, who favors better relations with the North.
Ex-diplomat Lee said the turmoil helped deepen his appreciation of liberal democracy.
“South Korea went on without a president following the impeachment for months. Even without a president, the system worked very well,” he said.
Such an outcome would be unthinkable in North Korea.
“The North has completely deified its leadership,” he said. “It cannot give its people the notion that its so-called supreme leader could actually be brought down by the people’s will.”
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