North Korea’s ambassador to Kuwait defected to the South in an ongoing sign of rebellion against Kim Jong Un.
Ryu Hyun Woo actually reached South Korea in September 2019, but it has only just been revealed by Tae Yong Ho, a fellow defector from the Hermit Kingdom who is now a lawmaker in Seoul.
“I decided to defect because I wanted to offer my child a better future,” Ryu said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP), citing Maeil Business newspaper.
Ryu had led North Korea’s embassy in Kuwait since former Ambassador So Chang Sik was expelled after a 2017 UN resolution sought to scale back the country’s overseas diplomatic missions.
It is seen as a key posting because Kuwait is a major source of foreign currency for Pyongyang, which has sent thousands of laborers there.
Ryu is also the son-in-law of Jon Il Chun, who once oversaw a Workers’ Party bureau responsible for managing the ruling Kim family’s secret coffers, dubbed Room 39.
His defection could be a sign that the North Korean elite who shore up Kim’s power base are drifting away from him, Tae said.
About 30,000 North Koreans have fled repression and poverty under the Communist regime and settled in the capitalist South, according to AFP.
In early 2019, North Korea’s ambassador to Italy, Jo Song Gil, vanished with his wife from the embassy and resurfaced in South Korea.
Tae was also a defector, fleeing his position as North Korea’s deputy ambassador to Britain before settling in the South in 2016.
Now a politician in the South, he encourages others to follow his route to a new life.
“I want to deliver to my colleagues working around the world and North Korean elites that there is an alternative to North Korea, and the door is open,” Tae said in an interview at the recent Reuters Next conference.
The National Intelligence Service declined to comment.
With Post wires