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 was accused of embezzling state funds, selling state secrets and raping a minor, Efe news reported.
The Pyongyang government also slammed the British government for disregarding global protocol and rejecting its demand to have Thae returned to North Korea, and instead handing him over to the South Koreans.
North Korea could be sending its agents after a top diplomat who defected to South Korea this, a defection expert was quoted as saying by CNN.
It claimed Britain had tainted its image as a law-abiding country by “handing over the fugitives without passports to the South Korean puppets”.
North Korea today demanded the repatriation of a dozen restaurant workers who jointly fled to South Korea, a day after blasting Seoul over a separate high-profile defection.
According to multiple sources who spoke under the condition of anonymity, Thae physically met an official from the South Korean government in mid-July at a tennis court in Britain and said he wished to defect with his wife and two sons.
The Unification Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about North Korea’s claims on Saturday.
The North Korean embassy in London where Thae worked [Photo by Frank Augstein/AP Images] Thae Yong-ho is believed to have descended from a privileged family.
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.
The two sides are officially still at war since the Korean War in the 1950s ended in a truce rather than a peace deal.
Since then more than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to the South, according to the South Korean government.
Overall, the number of defectors, mostly from the area near North Korea’s border with China, has declined since Kim Jong Un took power after his father’s death in late 2011. South Korea has maintained that the waitresses went to South Korea voluntarily. He was an INSS researcher from 1997 to 2012 before leaving to head the Association of the North Korean Defectors.
In March, the United Nations Security Council adopted a new punitive resolution on North Korea in reaction to the communist country’s fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch the following month.
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South Korea announced Thae and his family arrived in the country on Wednesday as he explained his reason for defecting to South Korea spokesman Jeong Joon-hee.
