The ministry said Thae chose to defect because of his disgust with the Kim Jong-Un regime, his yearning for South Korean democracy and concerns about his children’s future, Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, reported.
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The latest drills came a day after Seoul said a senior North Korean diplomat based in London defected to South Korea.
Saturday will mark a year since the North fired artillery rounds close to a South Korean border unit – Thursday’s drill was scheduled to begin at 5.04 p.m. (0904GMT), which is exactly the same time that the South fired back last year.
Seoul reported that a senior North Korean diplomat living in London defected to South Korea. He led a North Korean delegation that held talks with European Union representatives over the North’s human rights situation in Brussels in 2001, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. It also denounced the British government for ignoring worldwide protocol by rejecting what it said were demands to have Thae extradited back to the North and instead handing him over to the South.
The south’s representative added Thae left the communist country because he was “sick and exhausted of the Kim Jong-un regime”, and was anxious about his family’s future there.
August 18, Thursday, is the 40 anniversary of “Ax murder incident” in 1976 where in two United States soldiers were killed by North Koreans in a border class over USA to trim a tree.
North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Any defection by a ranking member of an overseas North Korean mission would make waves, but London is considered a particularly prestigious posting that puts Thae’s move on a whole different level.
Banning exports of mineral resources, jet fuel or other strategically import materials to North Korea, the latest resolution is viewed as putting considerable pressure on the country.
But the same official added, “Mr. Thae may have encountered enough outside information to form some basis for comparing South and North, and he appears to have made the decision [to defect] because he felt there was no hope for the Kim Jong-un and it would not overcome its limitation”. An official with the Ministry of Unification declined to confirm the family connections of Thae or his wife Oh.
Many defectors have said they wanted to leave Pyongyang’s harsh political system and widespread poverty.
Over the years, almost 30,000 North Koreans have fled poverty and repression in their country and settled in the South.
The Kim Jong-un regime described the drill, which brought together 300 artillery pieces from 49 battalions, as the largest shelling provocation in history, EFE news quoted a statement as saying.
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In regular contact with the media, Thae also spoke publicly about media coverage of the isolated country, including the press appetite for sensationalist stories about North Korea.
