According to BBC, one of Thae’s main responsibilities in London had been to spread the message that North Korea and its leadership under Kim Jong Un had been misreported and misunderstood.
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Yong Ho was a counselor at the North Korean embassy, which is based in a suburban house in Ealing, and was deputy to the ambassador.
While more than 1,000 North Koreans arrive in the South every year and a total of more than 29,000 are registered here, defections by overseas diplomats and government officials are rare.
The New York Times calls Thae the “No. 2” official of the five stationed at North Korea’s London embassy, and the Guardian reports it is the first such defection to have occurred since the embassy opened its doors 13 years ago.
Jeong declined to elaborate further on details such as the specific date and route of defection, citing “diplomatic reasons”.
A spokesman for the U.K. Foreign Office said that it is aware of the reports of the defection but has no immediate comment. Hwang’s 1997 defection was hailed by many South Koreans as an intelligence bonanza and a sign that the North’s political system was inferior to the South’s.
Thae’s defection will likely enrage North Korea, which often accuses South Korea of kidnapping or enticing its citizens to defect.
North Korea has become increasingly isolated after conducting its fourth nuclear test in January and numerous ballistic missile launches this year, which resulted in tightened UN Security Council sanctions.
The spokesperson added that the defection illustrated the “North’s core layer considers there is no hope for the Kim Jong Un regime anymore… the perception that the North Korean regime already reached breaking point has been spreading and internal unity among the ruling class has been weakened”.
Analyst Chang Yong Seok at Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies disputed that assessment, saying there are no tangible signs that Kim’s grip on power is being challenged.
According to an online search of his name, Thae’s son was an avid gamer, and had accumulated 368 hours regularly playing CounterStrike over the past year, under the name “North Korea is Best Korea”.
“The DPRK Embassy made belated attempts to figure out the diplomat’s whereabouts, but has failed”.
The restaurants are a source of sorely needed foreign currency for the North Korean state, which is cut off from most kinds of worldwide commerce by an increasingly tight set of economic sanctions.
The past year has already seen a spate of high-profile defections among members of North Korea’s elite.
“Presided over by North Korea Embassy in United Kingdom Tae-young-HO and his wife, with the family, such as the recent construction of the child entry”, the ministry’s official account wrote, according to a translation. Seoul then claimed that the restaurant workers had defected because they were under pressure to send more money back to North Korea, even as business was slumping with fewer South Korean customers.
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“They are under government protection and are going through necessary procedures with related institutions”, ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee told reporters. In April, South Korea said a high-ranking military officer had fled the isolationist regime.
