Citing results of interviews with North Korean defectors, Yoon Yeo-sang, director of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, said “the ratio of North Korean defectors who say they were upper-middle or upper class back home has been increasing since several years ago”.
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Seoul reported that a senior North Korean diplomat living in London defected to South Korea. Some observers have expressed concerns that Kim Jong Un’s fearpolitik could manifest as a “bloodbath” against family members with ties to the elite couple still in North Korea.
“Hooligans of the south Korean military hell-bent on escalating confrontation with the compatriots in the north launched a mad-cap shelling provocation in all sectors of the front at 16:34 on Thursday”, the unattributed KCNA article read.
Incensed at his former tutor, Kim Jong-il, the father of current leader Kim Jong-un, dispatched an assassination squad to the South to target him, although it didn’t succeed.
An estimated 815 North Koreans defected to South Korea in the first seven months of this year, up 15.6 percent from the same period last year, the unification ministry has said.
It is possible that they abducted his children and held them hostage until they agreed to go to South Korea, Kim told the Telegraph.
A South Korean army official said North Korea’s military did not show any signs of unusual activities in response – nor was there any sabre-rattling war of words from their despot leader.
Mr Thae Yong Ho, 55, is well known in the British news media, acting as the embassy’s main point of contact for British correspondents travelling to Pyongyang.
Seoul was captured by North Korea only three days after the North invaded the South on June 25, 1950.
“If the people in this country, or in America, knew that there is a country in the world where there is a free education, free housing, free medical care, then they’d have second thoughts”, Thae had said in one speech, the BBC reports.
“All of this suggests he had impeccable credentials and must have been considered very loyal and trustworthy in Pyongyang”, Yang added.
It is likely intelligence agencies will want to grill the diplomat, as he could have useful insider information concerning Kim Jong-uns regime. After Kim Jong-un officially became the chairman of the State Affairs Commission during the Party Congress that took place in May, North Korea immediately called for the full mobilization of the citizenry, declaring a “200-day battle”.
Some defectors change their names for security purposes and to protect loved ones left behind, or to appear less obviously North Korean.
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The North has been known to pursue defectors overseas and punish them severely.
