Korea state media says diplomat defector ‘criminal’

It said Thae was the second-highest diplomat at the North’s embassy, and called him the North’s most senior diplomat to ever defect to the South.

The top diplomat had defected to South Korea with his family citing his distaste for the Kim Jong Un regime and yearning for the Republic of Korea’s free democratic system and the future of his child are motives for the defection.

“By attacking Thae and Seoul through the KCNA it is expressing its views without running the risk of ordinary people knowing about the desertion”, he said.

Thae has another son and a daughter.

The unexpected defection of North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the U.K. Thae Young-ho set a landmark case reflecting Pyongyang’s internal instability.

The defection was a “unique situation”, and could lead to threats of retaliation from North Korea, said Sokeel Park, director of research at Liberty in North Korea, a California-based group that helps North Korean refugees. The Guardian showed footage of lectures Thae delivered to the Communist Party of Britain in 2013 and at a progressive book store in 2014, where he complained about the exorbitant rent he paid for his two-bedroom home in London and the “congestion charge”, a fee for taking cars into central London.

In 1997, Pyongyang’s ambassador to Egypt defected and eventually settled in the United States.

Seoul’s unification ministry, however, has refused to verify Thae and his wife’s familial background.

His stay in London spanned almost 10 years, during which he has been actively engaged in a campaign to promote North Korea’s national image against the backdrop of growing global pressure in the wake of North Korea’s relentless nuclear program.

Thae Yong-ho, whose defection to South Korea with his wife and children was announced on August 17, speaking in London in 2014. It has also presented the colleagues and parents of the waitresses to North Korean and global media in Pyongyang to appeal for their release.

Last year, as The Diplomat reported, the two Koreas exchanged artillery fire, with no reported casualties on either side. “The defection of a diplomat would allow intelligence services and military forces in other countries to learn more about the level of support that Kim Jong Un enjoys, recent developments in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs or the extent to which real economic reforms are being implemented”.

Officials in the South revealed Mr Thae arrived in the country on Wednesday but refused to give any further details.

Increasingly isolated internationally because of its nuclear weapons programme, North Korea maintains relatively few overseas embassies, and defections by diplomats of Thae’s stature are extremely rare.

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. A source well acquainted with Pyongyang said Kim Jong-un ordered his team of inspectors to get rid of possible defection factors. Thae’s defection to South Korea will likely come as a severe shock to North Korea.