SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – A North Korean diplomat who served as the country’s acting ambassador to Kuwait has defected to South Korea, South Korean lawmakers informed by the Seoul spy agency.
Ha Tae-keung, a conservative opposition lawmaker and executive secretary of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee, said on Tuesday that he was told by National Intelligence Service officials that the diplomat arrived in South Korea in September 2019 with his wife and at least one child. . .
That would make him one of the oldest North Koreans to defect in recent years. North Korea, which touts itself as a socialist paradise, is extremely prone to apostasy, especially among its elite, and has at times maintained that they are South Korean or American plots to undermine its government.
Ha said he was told the diplomat, who changed his name to Ryu Hyun-woo after arriving in the south, had escaped via a South Korean diplomatic mission, but that spy officials did not specify where. Ha said spy officers did not provide specific details as to why Ryu decided to defect.
The office of Kim Byung-kee, a lawmaker for the ruling Liberal Party and the other executive secretary of the intelligence commission, said he was also told that Ryu now lived in South Korea. Kim’s assistants did not elaborate.
The NOS and the South Korean Ministry of Unification, which deals with inter-Korean affairs, did not independently confirm Ryu’s defections when reached by The Associated Press.
The Kuwait Information Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A cell phone number once associated with the North Korean embassy there called unanswered on Tuesday.
North Korean state media has yet to comment on Ryu’s situation.
While North Korea has expressed anger over some high-profile dropouts in the past, it has also been known to remain silent when defectors hold low – such as the defector of its former acting ambassador to Italy in 2018 – in part to avoid drawing attention is drawn to the vulnerabilities of its government.
North Korea has long used its diplomats to earn money abroad, and experts have said that it is possible that diplomats who have defected have struggled to meet the financial demands of the authorities at home.
North Korea’s long mismanaged economy has been devastated by US-led sanctions on the nuclear program, which was significantly reinforced in 2016 and 2017 amid a provocative series of nuclear and weapons tests.
The defection by senior North Korean diplomats could reflect a growing sense of insecurity among the country’s elite about the country’s future under a third-generation dynasty obsessed with nuclear weapons, said Shin Beomchul, an analyst at the in-house. Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy. and a former South Korean diplomat.
“The North’s economic situation has deteriorated significantly with the 2016 and 2017 sanctions, and instead of pursuing reforms and openings to the outside world, the leadership is doubling down on increasing political control,” said Shin. “This raises questions about the future of the elite, and if they get the chance, they try to escape.”
However, Shin said it would be premature to view the defection as a sign that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s hold on his regime is weakening.
In recent speeches, Kim has vowed to strengthen his nuclear arsenal and reassert more state control over the economy and society. Experts say Kim’s comments were aimed, in part, at pressuring new US President Joe Biden’s administration after seeing his country’s economy decline amid pandemic border closures and his lack of relief from sanctions that never end. his diplomacy came with previous US president Donald Trump.
The North Korean Embassy in Kuwait City is the country’s only diplomatic outpost in the Gulf region. In North Korea, thousands of workers once worked in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, before the United Nations increased sanctions against North Korean labor exports, which had been a major source of foreign income for the North.
In a letter to the United Nations in March 2020, Kuwait said it had stopped issuing work permits for North Koreans and expelled those working in the country. The UAE said it had expelled all North Korean workers in late December 2019. Oman and Qatar have not provided updates since 2019 and 2018 respectively.
In September 2017, the Kuwaiti government expelled North Korea’s ambassador and four other diplomats after North Korean nuclear and missile tests. Ryu reportedly acted as acting ambassador thereafter.
Ryu appears to have fled months after North Korea’s acting ambassador to Italy, Jo Song Gil, disappeared with his wife in late 2018. Ha and other lawmakers told reporters last year that they found out Jo was living under government protection in South Korea after arriving in July 2019..
Jo may have been the most senior North Korean official to defect south since the arrival in 1997 of a high-ranking Workers Party official who once accompanied leader Kim Jong Un’s father, the late leader Kim Jong Il.
Tae Young Ho, a former minister at the North Korean embassy in London who defected to South Korea in 2016 and was elected last year to represent Ha’s party, said in a Facebook post that Ryu’s defection members of the North. Korean ruling elite would shock. because he turns out to be the son-in-law of Jon Il Chun, who once ran a ruling party agency that handled the Kim family’s secret money earners. The Associated Press was unable to independently verify Tae’s claim.
According to data from the South Korean government, more than 33,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1950-53. Many defectors have said they escaped harsh political oppression and poverty, while elites such as Tae have expressed resentment over the country’s dynastic leadership.
Tae has said he decided to flee because he did not want his children to lead a “miserable” life in North Korea and that he was disappointed with Kim Jong Un, who he said was terrorizing North Korean elites with executions and purges. while at the same time consolidating power and aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons.
North Korea has called Tae “human scum” and accused him of embezzling public money and committing other crimes without providing specific evidence.
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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai contributed to this report.