North Korea, in its first response to the defection of a senior diplomat to South Korea, branded the deputy envoy as an embezzler, child rapist and all around “human scum”.
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Thae is believed to be the second most senior North Korean diplomat to defect to South Korea.
Thae Yong Ho became the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat to defect to the South, Seoul confirmed on Wednesday.
The defector, Thae Yong-Ho, had embezzled huge sums of money, raped a minor and spied for South Korea, Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
Rather than return home, the statement said, Thae “proved himself to be human scum who betrayed the fatherland” by fleeing.
It said that North Korea had informed the British government of the accusations against Thae and asked that he be handed over to North Korean officials, but that London had instead created an “indelible stain” in relations between the countries by letting him go to South Korea, to be used in a “smear campaign” against the North.
The Pyongyang government also slammed the British government for disregarding worldwide protocol and rejecting its demand to have Thae returned to North Korea, and instead handing him over to the South Koreans.
He speculated that Pyongyang clearly does not want the people to know that the No. 2 diplomat to its embassy in London had defected to South Korea. Doing otherwise “would be tantamount to admitting to the inferiority of its own regime”, he said.
In April, 13 North Koreans working at a North Korean-operated restaurant in China defected to South Korea.
Pyongyang has since accused the diplomat of treason, “sex offense” and “embezzling state property” while scolding the United Kingdom for handing Yong Ho to South Korea. Thae, the ministry added, “respects the democratic system of South Korea and for the sake of the future of his family, he defected”.
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North Korea recently has expressed anger at a U.S. plan to place an advanced missile defense system in South Korea. Pyongyang often accuses the South of deceiving or paying its citizens to defect, or claims that they have simply been kidnapped. Its announcement of Thae’s defection came with ties between the rivals at one of their lowest points in decades following the North’s nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year. It was the largest group defection since Kim Jong-un took power in late 2011.
