South Korea claimed yesterday that Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to Britain had defected to Seoul.
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The US government is increasingly concerned that advances in North Korea’s weapons program have dramatically decreased the warning time for a nuclear attack on America or its allies, according to US officials.
It was announced on Wednesday that Thae had defected to South Korea, along with his family – the highest profile diplomatic defection in the country’s history. But the defectors also reported that the relationship was not very close, to their knowledge.
“If the people in this country, or in America, knew that there is a country in the world where there is a free education, free housing, free medical care, then they’d have second thoughts”, Thae had said in one speech, the BBC reports.
A South Korean army’s K-9 self-propelled howitzer fires during a military exercise in Yeoncheon near the border with North Korea, South Korea, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016. The Unification Ministry said Mr. Thae’s defection reflected the loss of faith among North Korea’s elite in Kim Jong-Un’s leadership.
Dr Ramon Pacheco Pardo, senior lecturer in worldwide relations at King’s College London, said a diplomatic defection “could prove very valuable to South Korea, the United States and other countries”. “Nothing official is known about their family relationships”.
Because the country has been brazen in its testing of missiles, the USA official said, its weapons are now “attack ready”, meaning the nation and its allies – including the United Kingdom – could be “at risk” of attack.
New satellites images from the 38 North website reveal activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site, showing a canopy has been erected to block the view of United States spy satellites. Thae told South Korean officials that he defected because of his disillusionment with Kim Jong Un’s regime and his yearning for freedom, Jeong said.
The south’s representative added Thae left the communist country because he was “sick and exhausted of the Kim Jong-un regime”, and was anxious about his family’s future there. “This may be one of the things that starts cracks forming in the Kim Jong-un’s regime global solidarity”. That same month, South Korea confirmed that 13 North Koreans working at a state-run restaurant in China – a key source of foreign currency for the regime – had defected. His father fought alongside the nation’s founder Kim Il Sung against colonial Japan, and was a four-star general and member of the ruling party’s central committee before his death in 1997, Yonhap News reported. According to Evans, Thae’s oldest son received a degree in public healthcare economics from a British university, with a graduation thesis on Pyongyang’s need to build additional disabled parking spaces to become a global city.
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Seoul’s unification ministry, however, has refused to verify Thae and his wife’s familial background.
