A privileged background and powerful connections with the ruling elite back in Pyongyang appear to have provided the springboard for North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-Ho’s successful defection to South Korea, analysts said Thursday.
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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.
North Korea’s deputy ambassador to London has defected to South Korea.
The media outlet said the act has enraged the North Korean military and people, warning that “any rash military provocation will result in South Korea paying a high-price penalty”. Thae Yong-ho, the NK diplomat, who vanished earlier this month with his wife and children, was confirmed by the Ministry of Unification in Seoul to have sought asylum in South Korea.
In April, a group of 13 North Koreans who worked in the same restaurant in an unspecified country defected to South Korea.
North Korea has described a London-based diplomat who defected to South Korea as “human scum”.
“Steve Evans, a South Korean correspondent for BBC, wrote in an article published Tuesday that he has pleasant memories” with Thae and that “the signs were there” that the diplomat thought about defecting to South Korea.
The South said he was driven by disgust for the Pyongyang regime, admiration for South Korea’s free and democratic system and concerns for his family’s future.
The diplomat left for the sake of his family and because he was “tired of Kim Jong Un’s regime”, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joo-hee said Wednesday. In 1997, the North Korean ambassador to Egypt fled but resettled in the United States.
Thae was formerly a minister at the North’s embassy in London.
N Korea says diplomat defector “criminal” was posted in World of TheNews International – https://www.thenews.com.pk on August 21, 2016 and was last updated on August 21, 2016.
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.
Since then more than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to the South, according to the South Korean government.
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Defections are a source of bitter contention between the rival Koreas, and South Korea doesn’t always make high-profile cases public.
