Mr. Thae defected due to being “sick and exhausted of the Kim Jong-un regime”, and for the future of his child, Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman at the South’s Unification Ministry, told a news conference.
Advertisement
One of five officials at the embassy in addition to the ambassador, the diplomat’s job was to keep track of North Korean defectors living in London.
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.
Thae was second only to Ambassador Hyon Hak Bong at the embassy in London.
North Korea’s other statements have raised concerns in Japan and the United States, including a missive from Pyongyang’s Atomic Energy Institute to Kyodo news agency confirming plutonium production at the Yongbyon nuclear complex.
Mr Thae had come under pressure from his government to quash growing criticism of North Korea’s human rights record, sources say.
More than 800 North Koreans have defected, many to South Korea, so far this year.
However, South Korea’s Unification Ministry announced on Wednesday that the official had actually defected to Seoul with his family members.
Thae Yong Ho, North Korean diplomat speaking in 2004 during an interview in Pyongyang.
North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, and South Korea has been working hard to apply more global pressure on the North.
The UK Foreign Office told CNN it will not be commenting on Thae’s defection. Green said. “For him to defect doesn’t say anything good about the nature of the government of North Korea today”.
Most North Koreans overseas, whether they are credentialed diplomats or lowly laborers, live without their families-an arrangement born both of economic necessity and of a desire to keep them from defecting.
Over the years, almost 30,000 North Koreans have fled poverty and repression in their country and settled in the South.
Thae’s departure comes at a time of increasing global concern about the Un government. Thursday is the 40th anniversary of a 1976 “ax murder incident” in which two USA soldiers were hacked to death by North Koreans during a border area clash over US efforts to trim a tree.
Advertisement
These higher-profile defections have taken place alongside a general rise in the number of North Koreans making it to South Korea.
