A high-ranking North Korean diplomat, who defected with his wife and children in London, and is now in South Korea, is from a privileged family with a long revolutionary pedigree in North Korean politics. South Korea’s Ministry of Unification confirmed on Wednesday that Thae Yong-Ho, the second-in-command at the North Korean embassy in the United Kingdom, had defected with his wife and children and had been given political asylum in South Korea. As intelNews reported earlier this week, Thae, a senior career diplomat believed to be one of North Korea’s foremost experts on Western Europe, had disappeared with his family and was presumed to have defected “to a third country”.
New information has since emerged on Thae
and his family, confirming that both he and his wife are members of
North Korea’s privileged elite, with decades-old connections to the
ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. According to the Seoul-based JoongAng Daily,
Thae’s wife, O Hye-Son, is a niece of the late O Peak-Ryong, a
decorated communist guerrilla who fought Korea’s Japanese colonialists
in the 1930s. O, who died in the 1980s, joined the Korean anti-Japanese
struggle alongside Kim Il-Sung, founder of the Workers’ Party of Korea
and first leader of North Korea. This means that O Hye-Son is also the
cousin of O Peak-Ryong’s son, General O Kum-Chol, who is currently vice
chairman of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army. Thae himself
is the son of Thae Pyong-Ryol, a four-star general who also fought
against the Japanese in the 1930s, alongside Kim Il-Sung. In the postwar
period, General Thae became a senior member of the Workers’ Party of
Korea and was appointed to the Party’s powerful Central Committee. He
died in 1997.
JoongAng Daily quoted an unnamed
“source familiar with the matter” of Thae’s defection, who said that
the diplomat’s loyalty to the North Korean leadership had been
unquestioned prior to his surprise defection. Most North Korean
diplomats are posted at an embassy abroad for a maximum of three years
before being moved elsewhere in the world. The fact that Thae had been
allowed to remain in the United Kingdom for 10 years shows his
privileged status within the Workers’ Party of Korea, said the source.
Additionally, the children or most North Korean diplomats are required
to return to their native country after completing high school. But this
did not seem to apply to Thae, whose three children were living with
him in Britain even after graduating from university. This and many
other clues reflect Thae’s “impeccable credentials”, said the source,
which made him one of the most trusted government officials in the
regime’s bureaucratic arsenal.
It is believed that Thae defected because
he had been told that his tenure in London was coming to an end after a
decade, and he would have to relocate to a less desirable location, or
possibly recalled back to Pyongyang. Defections among North Korea’s
privileged elite are rare, but have been happening increasingly
frequently in the past few years. This makes some observers believe that
disillusionment among Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un’ inner circle is
growing and that the North Korean regime is becoming weaker.
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