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 isolated regime for the democratic South Korea.
The Unification Ministry in Seoul declined to say when or how Thae and his family arrived, or how many relatives accompanied him.
Thae defected due to discontent with the regime of Kim Jong Un in North Korea 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.
Impoverished North Korea and prosperous South Korea are technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
The announcement came a day after media report that a high-profile North Korean diplomat, later identified by the BBC as Thae, had defected.
Several diplomats from North Korea have defected to the South over the last two years, including one from Thailand, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported on Wednesday, citing a source familiar with North Korean affairs.
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 to South Korea earlier this year.
The number of defections by North Koreans to the South this year through July totalled 814, an annual increase of 15 percent, a ministry official told Reuters.
Thae Yong-ho compares Life in North Korea and England
Impassioned Speeches
Among his many responsibilities, Thae was well-known to the British press, 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 defence of North Korea, according to videos of the events.
Debonair and well-spoken, Thae Yong Ho has over ten years experience working on UK and EU-related issues as a diplomat.
His measured style was a contrast to the bombastic rhetoric often used by Pyongyang’s propagandists, although at some events he sang revolutionary Red Army Choir songs in Korean.
In regular contact with the media, Thae also spoke publicly about media coverage of the isolated country, including the press appetite for sensationalist stories about North Korea.
(This article has been edited for length.)
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