Thae was accused of embezzling state funds, selling state secrets and raping a minor, Efe news reported.
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In its first official response to the high-profile defection, the North accused the South of launching an “anti-DPRK (North Korea) smear campaign and confrontation”.
While the veracity of the accusations is unclear, by stressing that his aim was to flee justice rather than dissatisfaction with the regime, it appears aimed at ensuring that other high-level cadres do not follow Thae’s lead.
Sokeel Park, the director of research at Liberty in North Korea, an organization that assists North Korean refugees, told CNN that family members of the diplomat that remained behind in North Korea will likely face harsh punishment.
Thae Yong Ho’s move was announced by South Korea’s Unification Ministry on Wednesday, saying that he had arrived in the city with his family. The letters read “A high-ranking North Korean diplomat”.
“However, the U.K handed over the fugitive and his family carrying no passports to the South Korean puppet forces, contrary to its duty to protect the foreign diplomats in its country, thereby besmirching its image as a law-governed state”, the KCNA said. In 1997, the North Korean ambassador to Egypt fled but resettled in the United States. North Korea often accuses the South of deceiving or paying its citizens to defect, or claims that they have simply been kidnapped.
North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Analysts said Thae had a privileged background and powerful connections with the ruling elite and that his defection represented the flight of some of the North’s best and brightest. Also in April, Seoul announced that a colonel in North Korea’s military spy agency had defected to the South previous year.
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