The Unification Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about North Korea’s claims on Saturday.
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“It’s also possible that they abducted his children and held them hostage until he agreed to go to South Korea”, said Kim. The Seoul government declined to confirm the reports.
South Korea doesn’t always make high-level defection cases public. “It’s likely that it is cautiously watching over the situation, considering the impact the case will have internally”.
In announcing the defection, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said Wednesday that Thae was the second-highest North Korean official at the embassy and the most senior North Korean diplomat ever to defect to South Korea.
A North Korean official said: “The enemies are bluffing that they can mount a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the DPRK [North Korea] by letting fly B-1B over the Korean peninsula within two-three hours in contingency”.
On Thursday, an army official of South Korea said that there’s a total of 300 artillery systems placed by the military units along the border as the army starts firing shells in different directions. The family realized that plan late last month, traveling directly from the United Kingdom to South Korea. But the number of artillery mobilised in today’s drills was the biggest ever, and the simultaneous shooting in all major front-line areas was a departure from previous exercises, the army official said.
“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. “I told him it was a mega-bustling city, a world away from Pyongyang”.
North Korean diplomats and workers at foreign nations are hard pressed to repatriate money to North Korea which faces tougher worldwide sanctions over its nuclear and missile provocations.
North Korean state media cited the threat of the U.S. increasing its influence in the region as justification.
Some $2,000 to $3,000 is earmarked every year for each North Korean embassy, but most of the amount is allocated for the annual birthday receptions of former leader Kim Jong-il and his father, Kim Il Sung. Short on cash, most diplomats smuggle money out of their home countries through illegal channels, according to the report.
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The embassies that are most economically stabile, the source said, are the ones stationed in China and Southeast Asia.
