The Unification Ministry said Thae Yong-Ho – the number-two at the North’s mission in London – had defected together with his family and they were now in the South Korean capital.
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“They are now under government protection and relevant institutions are going ahead with necessary procedures as usual”.
Jeong declined to give details on the timing of Thae’s arrival or his itinerary.
“They are now under the Seoul Government’s protection and relevant institutions are proceeding with necessary procedures”, Jeong Joon Hee, a ministry spokesman, told reporters, according to the Yonhap News Agency.
According to the BBC, Thae was tasked with spreading “positive perceptions of the North Korean leadership”, and had said publicly that the British were brainwashed into believing “shocking, terrifying” lies about North Korea and its leader.
A North Korean diplomat based in London has defected to South Korea.
Defections of senior North Korea officials are relatively rare, and the flight of Thae Yong Ho to South Korea marked an embarrassing blow to the authoritarian government of Kim Jong Un.
He was credited with developing the North Korean ideology of “juche”, or “self-reliance”.
It was a pointed comment that was clearly calculated to resonate – even if Thae’s defection falls far short of signalling any imminent collapse of the regime in Pyongyang.
But analysts say continued support is contingent on keeping the Pyongyang elite in the privileged lifestyle to which they are accustomed – a task made far tougher by tightened United Nations sanctions. That announcement came days after 13 North Korean workers at a state-run restaurant in China defected en masse.
Wednesday’s announcement came as North Korea is responding angrily to a USA plan to place an advanced missile defense system in South Korea. It was not clear in Korean whether Jeong was referring to more than one child.
Thae was a deputy to the ambassador who was responsible for promoting the image of North Korea to Britons.
Hundreds of North Koreans flee the country each year, with most heading to South Korea.
Thae had in some ways been the public face of the embassy, giving talks at bookshops and at British Communist Party meetings in which he extolled the virtues of the North Korean system, a sign of the latitude he had within the regime, Cathcart said.
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Those who still managed to flee in recent years often had families already settled in the South, or were relatively well-off and well-connected members of the elite in search of better lives. South Korea on Wednesday announced the defection of the deputy ambassador of North Korea in Britain, who is now located in Seoul with his family.
