North Korean Diplomat Defects in South
Thae Yong-ho, a north Korean senior diplomat who was based in great Britain, defected to South Korea, one of the most prominent officials of the do over the last few years to make.
by REUTERS on Date [Register August 17, 2016. Photo by Kim Hyun-Tae / Yonhap, via Associated Press. Watch the video Times "SEOUL, South Korea - He liked a bit of tennis at the local club. He indulged curry in an Indian restaurant in West London where he lived. As the No. 2 North Korean diplomat in Britain, he chaperoned a brother of the reclusive leader of his country to Eric Clapton concert last year.
The diplomat Thae Yong-ho, 55, seemed to embrace the trappings of a comfortable life in a capitalist thousands of miles dreary capital of North Korea, making no reference to disloyalty. He had lived in London for ten years, confidence due to the impeccable legacy of his family in North Korean history.
So it was a shock Wednesday when South Korea announced that Mr. Thae had betrayed his hermetic country by becoming the most senior North Korean official to defect in nearly two decades.
How and when the diplomat had escaped his colleagues in the North Korean embassy, who are required to monitor each other to counter the betrayal was not clear. But a spokesman for the South Korean government, Jeong Joon-hee, said at a news conference that the diplomat had recently arrived in South Korea with his wife and family, proclaiming disillusionment with the government increasingly isolated north Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.
M .. Jeong did not specify the number of family members had accompanied Mr. Thae or if everything remained in North Korea, where they could be at risk of reprisals. it does not explain the route taken by Mr. Thae, second to Ambassador Hyon Hak-bong in London.
"We see his defection as a sign that some of the core elite in the North are losing hope in a regime-Jong Kim, "said Mr. Jeong," and that the internal unity of the ruling class in the North is weakening. "
South Korean officials have expressed similar conclusions in April when 13 people working in a restaurant run by the North Korean government in China have fled south. Officials said that unusual group of defection reflects the growing dissatisfaction in the north.
But analysts warned against drawing such conclusions.
Cheong Seong-chang, an expert on North Korea at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, said that isolated defections as Mr. Thae of should not be considered as an indication of instability in the North, and that there was no sign of an organized challenge to the rule of Kim.
others were cautious because some north Korean defectors in South Korea has still not found happiness, a message that may have found its way back to Pyongyang, the northern capital, and elsewhere.
"I think we'll continue to see senior defections, but a run-rate," said Jae H. Ku, director of the Korea Institute of US school of Johns Hopkins University of Advanced international studies in Washington. "I do not think we're at a point where we will see massive defections by the elite because these elites have not yet found ways to live comfortably in South Korea."
However, the defection of Mr. Thae could provide a wealth of information. It came as relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated over the North's nuclear weapons and missile programs, tested in defiance of international sanctions.
While the North had no immediate reaction to the news of the defection, he was seen in the South and elsewhere as a major embarrassment for Kim, who disciplined his subordinates in the demoting or in some cases execution.
The last time a North Korean diplomat of high rank defected was in 1997, when Jang Seung-gil, the ambassador in Egypt, sought refuge in the United States with his younger brother a north Korean diplomat in Paris.
Inklings a betrayal North Korean embassy in London surfaced a few days ago when a South Korean major newspaper, JoongAng Ilbo, citing an unnamed source saying a diplomat, he had defected in early August after "careful preparation." when other embassy officials have realized this, the newspaper said the diplomat had fled.
M .. Thae was well known in the British media, acting as the main point of the Embassy of contact for British correspondents traveling to Pyongyang. Reuters reported that Mr. Thae has regularly spoken of the events at the extreme left in London, including meetings of a British Communist party, where he would make impassioned speeches in defense of North Korea.
Steve Evans a BBC correspondent in Korea who met Mr. Thae London remembered North Korea as a middle-aged man who seemed to enjoy life in the suburbs of west London. He attended a curry restaurant and liked to talk about family and health, including concerns about the onset of diabetes, Evans said. He changed tennis after his wife complained about his golf obsession.
M .. Thae was a North Korean escorts seen accompanying the elder brother of Kim, Kim Jong-chul, a Clapton concert in London in 2015.
The diplomat had been expected to return to Pyongyang this summer with his wife and son, Mr. Evans reported.
"But it seemed so British," he wrote. "He seemed so at home. It seemed the middle class, so conservative, so dapper. He never gave any hint of disloyalty to the regime, not a glimmer of doubt."
According to media new south Korean, Mr. Thae and his wife, Oh Hae-son, 50, had a family history of elite. Mr. Thae Thae was a son of Byong-ryol, a comrade in arms of the Grand Mr. Kim's father, founding president of the North, Kim Il-sung, when the elder Kim was a leader of the Korean guerrilla struggle against the Japanese colonialists in the early 20th century, the news agency south Korean Yonhap reported. Ms. Oh was a relative of another former guerrilla supporter Korean, Oh Baek-ryong, the south Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.
Offspring of former guerrillas occupy key government posts Pyongyang constituting an elite core underpinning the Kim rule and living with luxuries of ordinary North Koreans can only dream. They are allowed to study abroad, as Mr. Thae and his son were in China and Europe. Mr. Thae served in London for 10 years, an unusually long time passing in an outpost of choice for a North Korean diplomat.
South Korean officials have cited recent defectors as evidence that some North Korean elites abroad were defecting rather than face persecution, as it became increasingly difficult to achieve their duties under stricter international sanctions.
The number of North Korean defectors arriving in South Korea fell from a peak of 2706 in 2011 to 1275 last year, as ordered Mr. Kim his country to tighten control of the border with China, the first stop for almost all asylum seekers. The number of defectors began to take again this year, with 749 arriving in the first six months.
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