SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – A North Korean diplomat who served as the country’s acting ambassador to Kuwait has left South Korea, according to South Korean lawmakers who were briefed by the US intelligence agency. Seoul.
Ha Tae-keung, a conservative opposition lawmaker and executive secretary of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee, said Tuesday that officials from the National Intelligence Service reported that the diplomat arrived in Korea from South in September 2019 with his wife and at least one son.
This would make him one of the most defective North Koreans in recent years. North Korea, which presents itself as a socialist paradise, is extremely sensitive to defections, especially among its elite, and has sometimes insisted that they are South Korean or American plots to undermine its government.
Ha said he was told that the diplomat, who changed his name to Ryu Hyun-woo after arriving in the south, had escaped through a South Korean diplomatic mission, but that intelligence officials they did not specify where. He said spy officials did not provide specific details about why Ryu decided to defect.
The office of Kim Byung-kee, a ruling Liberal Party lawmaker and the other executive secretary of the intelligence committee, said he was also told that Ryu now lives in South Korea. Kim’s aides didn’t dig deep.
The NIS and South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which deals with inter-Korean affairs, did not independently confirm Ryu’s defection when he reached The Associated Press.
The Kuwaiti Ministry of Information did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A cell phone number associated with the North Korean embassy rang unanswered on Tuesday.
North Korean state media have not yet commented on Ryu’s situation.
While North Korea has expressed anger at some high-profile defections in the past, it is also known to remain silent when defectors remain low-profile, such as the desertion of its former interim ambassador to Italy in 2018, in part to avoid highlighting vulnerabilities of his government.
North Korea has long used its diplomats to develop sources of earnings abroad and experts have said it is possible that deserted diplomats may have had trouble meeting the financial demands of domestic authorities.
North Korea’s long-mismanaged economy has been devastated by U.S.-led sanctions on its nuclear program, which were significantly strengthened in 2016 and 2017 amid a provocative series of nuclear tests and ‘weapons.
The defections of North Korea’s top diplomats could reflect a growing sense of uncertainty among the country’s elite about the nation’s future under a third-generation dynasty obsessed with nuclear weapons, said Shin Beomchul, a US analyst. ‘Seoul-based Korea National Strategy Research Institute. and a former South Korean diplomat.
“The economic situation in the North has worsened significantly since the 2016 and 2017 sanctions and, instead of pursuing reforms and openings to the outside world, leadership is doubling as political control increases,” Shin said. “This inspires questions about the future of the elite and when they get the chance, they try to run away.”
However, Shin said it would be premature to take the defections as a sign that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s control over his regime is weakening.
In recent speeches, Kim has vowed to strengthen its nuclear arsenal and reaffirm greater state control over the economy and society. Experts say Kim’s comments were aimed, in part, at pressuring the administration of new US President Joe Biden after seeing his country’s economy decay amid border closures caused by a pandemic and his failure to obtain a relief from sanctions that never materialized through his diplomacy with former U.S. President Donald Trump.
The North Korean embassy in Kuwait City is the only diplomatic advance in the country in the Gulf region. North Korea once had thousands of workers working in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates before the United Nations stepped up sanctions on North Korean labor exports, which had been a major source of foreign revenue for the United States. 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 the North Korean ambassador and four other diplomats after North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests. Ryu reportedly intervened as acting ambassador afterwards.
It appears Ryu 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 knew that I lived in South Korea under government protection after arriving in July 2019.
I was possibly the highest-ranking North Korean official to deviate from the south since the arrival in 1997 of a senior ruling ruling Party official who once tutored the father of leader Kim Jong Un, the late leader Kim Jong Il.
Tae Young Ho, a former minister at the North Korean embassy in London who defected from South Korea in 2016 and was elected lawmaker representing Ha’s party last year, said in a Facebook post that the defection of Ryu would impact members of the North Korean ruling elite because he appears to be the son-in-law of Jon Il Chun, who once oversaw a ruling party office that managed the Kim family’s secret fundraising operations. The Associated Press was unable to independently verify Tae’s claim.
More than 33,000 North Koreans have left South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, according to South Korean government records. Many deserters have said they were fleeing harsh political suppression and poverty, while elites like 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 live “miserable” lives in North Korea and was disappointed with Kim Jong Un, who said he terrorized North Korean elites with executions and purges while consolidating the power and aggressively. he was pursuing nuclear weapons.
North Korea has called Tae a “human scum” and accuses him of embezzling government money and committing other crimes, without presenting specific evidence.
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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai contributed to this report.