“The defection of Thae Yong-ho, the No. 2 man at the North Korean Embassy in London may be causing tremors in the North as well as hurting the country’s image overseas”, the source said.
Advertisement
North Korea’s state-run news agency said Saturday that a senior North Korean diplomat based in London who recently defected to South Korea is a “criminal” who fled to escape legal punishment.
The North Korean statement said that Thae, whom it did not identify by name, had been ordered in June to return from Britain to Pyongyang, the North’s capital, because he had embezzled state funds, sold official secrets and sexually assaulted a minor.
It also slammed South Korea’s coverage of the incident and blamed Seoul for using the case to tarnish the North Korea’s image.
The commentary also accused Britain of “handing over the fugitives without passports to the South Korean puppets and neglecting its duty to protect diplomats living in its own country”.
Thae is the highest ranking diplomat ever to defect from North Korea.
Please Wait while comments are loading.
Thae, one of five diplomats serving at the embassy – aside from the ambassador – was tasked with keeping an eye on North Korean defectors in the British capital and is reported to have been active in the local community.
The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, James Robbins, said it now looked as if Mr Thae’s heart may not have been in the task of defending North Korea.
Almost 30,000 North Koreans have fled poverty and repression at home to settle in the capitalist South. Pyongyang often accuses the South of deceiving or paying its citizens to defect, or claims that they have simply been kidnapped.
Technically, the North and South remain at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
He noted attempts to assassinate Hwang Jang-Yop, the North’s chief ideologue and former tutor to previous leader Kim Jong-Il, who defected to the South in 1997 and died of natural causes in 2010.
During a talk at a bookshop in Londons Kings Cross in 2014, Thae reportedly admitted to having concerns over money and having to pay for the central London congestion charge for motorists.
In a previous speech, Mr Thae said Britons were brainwashed by their ruling class into believing “shocking, terrifying” lies about the communist country.
Advertisement
A spokesman for the South Korean government earlier said the top diplomat defected because he is “sick and exhausted of Kim Jong-un’s regime”. They made headlines when they arrived in the South in April as the largest group defection for years. North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by several missile tests despite toughened United Nations sanctions against it.
