The highest-level North Korean to seek asylum in South Korea is Hwang Jang-yop, a senior ruling Workers’ Party official who once tutored Kim Jong Un’s late father, dictator Kim Jong Il.
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Seoul said that Thae made a decision to defect because of his disgust with the government of North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, his yearning for South Korean democracy and concerns about the future of his children.
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.
North Korea on Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016, said Thae, a senior North Korean diplomat who recently defected to South Korea, is a criminal and “human scum”, in its first official response to the defection. Meanwhile, a Unification Ministry official responded to the rife speculation on Seoul’s reasons for taking the unusual step of officially announcing the Thae family’s arrival.
Thursday’s drills also marked what South Korea describes as an artillery exchange between the Koreas in August 2015 following land mine explosions that maimed two South Korean soldiers.
The diplomat is reportedly from the very best family in North Korea, which may be a sign that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s grasp on power is not as strong as it is believed.
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. South Korea’s military said it conducted its largest-ever artillery drill near the heavily militarized border with the North on Thursday. The Guardian reported that his 19-year-old second son showed exceptional talent, receiving As in school and awaiting matriculation at Imperial College London.
In 2011, police in Seoul arrested a North Korean agent carrying a gun created to fire a bullet coated in poison that was disguised as a torch.
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Technically, the North and South remain at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. Defections from those in managerial positions are relatively rare, with just 480 defecting in the past decade, according to South Korea’s government. “This may be one of the things that starts cracks forming in the Kim Jong-un’s regime global solidarity”. It raised questions about possible vulnerability of the leadership and the amount of intelligence about the North that Thae may be able to provide.
