Category: North Korean refugee

A well-paying job and bodyguards await diplomat defector

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Thae Yong Ho, the most senior North Korean diplomat to flee to the South, is likely to have round-the-clock protection and make a comfortable living at a think-tank run by Seoul’s intelligence service, say elite defectors who followed a similar path.

Choi Ju-hwal was a colonel in the North Korean army when he fled to South Korea via Hong Kong during a business trip in China in 1995, making him the highest-level military defector at the time. Choi said that for two years, he had four armed policemen guarding him around the clock due to concerns about his safety. He now has a lower level of police protection.

While Thae had a relatively high public profile as a representative of North Korea in London, Choi expects the ex-diplomat to try to live anonymously in South Korea. “He won’t pursue a public life, because he has to think about the safety of his family he brought here.” Choi said.

One thing is certain: Well-connected defectors like Thae are treated as a valuable resource who can shed light on a secretive neighbor.

[Reuters]

Senior North Korean diplomat’s defection a ‘unique situation’

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South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joo-hee said on Wednesday North Korean diplomat Thae Yong Ho defected for the sake of his family and because he was “tired of Kim Jong Un’s regime.”

Liberty in North Korea (LINK) Director of Research and Strategy Sokeel Park said the defection of the senior North Korean diplomat  was a “unique situation,” and could lead to threats of retaliation from North Korea.

“There’s been those kind of things that have happened in the past for very high level defectors: assassination attempts, death threats … there will be protection from the South Korean authorities around this person, especially [in] the short term,” Park said.

Park said the defector Thae was the member of an elite family in North Korea, the son of a high-profile general. As with all high-profile defections, Park said the family still in North Korea could expect to face suspicion and possibly punishment in the future.

Park said it was unusual the diplomat had been with his entire immediate family overseas when he was posted. “That’s quite rare … a lot of the time there will be a son or an immediate family member that’s still back in North Korea kind of as collateral to make it harder for people to defect,” he said.

When asked why Thae may have defected to South Korea, rather than the United Kingdom where he was posted, Park said he may have been offered more incentives. “Maybe he would have better career prospects, for instance, if he came to South Korea, worked with the national intelligence service … rather than staying in the United Kingdom,” he said.

[CNN]

A North Korean defector’s life in webtoon

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When North Korean defector Choi Sung-Guk decided it was time to go public with his experiences, he avoided the well-trodden “harrowing memoir” route in favor of a cartoon strip.

Drawing skills and some online space provided Choi with everything he needed to reach a young Korean-speaking audience that might otherwise have little attention to spare for a 36-year-old escapee from over the border. Choi, who spent eight years making cartoons at a Pyongyang animation studio, now posts a weekly online comic strip, or webtoon, on South Korea’s largest internet portal, Naver.

Rodong Simmun webtoon Choi Sung GukThe strip is called Rodong Simmun (Labor Interrogation) — a play on the name of the North Korean ruling party’s official mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun (Labor Newspaper) — and details the struggles of North Korean defectors adapting to life in the capitalist South. A lot of the material is based on Choi’s own experiences since arriving in Seoul as a 30-year-old defector in 2010.

Choi only started posting his strips in May and, in what is a crowded and highly-competitive field, they are already averaging around 20,000 views and garnering fawning reviews from a growing number of South Korean fans. The YouTube channel also has Korean subscribers living overseas in countries like the United States.

[Read full Korea Herald article]

North Korean diplomat defector now in South Korea

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A senior North Korean diplomat based in London has defected to South Korea, becoming one of the highest Northern officials to do so, South Korea said Wednesday.

Thae Yong Ho, minister at the North Korean Embassy in London, has arrived in South Korea with his family and is under the protection of the South Korean government, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said. Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee said Thae told South Korean officials that he decided to defect because of his disgust with the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, his yearning for South Korean democracy and worries about the future of his children.

Jeong said Thae was the second-highest official in North Korea’s embassy, and is the most senior North Korean diplomat to defect to South Korea. (In 1997, the North Korean ambassador to Egypt fled but resettled in the United States.) 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. Hwang died in 2010.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo, senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London, said this diplomatic defection “could prove very valuable to South Korea, the U.S. and other countries. … Most North Korean defectors have limited access to the inner workings of the North Korean regime,” he said. “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.”

Thae, 55, is a veteran diplomat who is experienced in dealing with countries in Western Europe. 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. He had worked at the North Korean Embassy in London for about 10 years.

[Associated Press]

North Korean diplomat at London embassy defects

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A diplomat at the North Korean embassy in London has defected and fled abroad with his family, BBC News understands.

The diplomat, Thae Yong Ho, had served as deputy to the ambassador and was responsible for promoting the image of his country to British audiences. He had reportedly lived in the UK for 10 years with his wife and family and disappeared from his home in west London.

The South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reports:”A DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] diplomat in London is going through procedures to seek asylum in a third country.” The paper said that in this context “a third country” means one that is neither North nor South Korea.

“A high-level defection, if confirmed, will be deeply embarrassing for the regime,” said John Nilsson-Wright, an expert on Asian affairs at the London-based Chatham House think tank. “The intelligence benefits to the UK and its allies from such a defection are likely to prove valuable.”

[BBC]

More on North Korean defection in Hong Kong

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North Korean national Jong Yol Ri snuck away from the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. and on July 16 found refuge at the South Korean Consulate General in Hong Kong.

It is believed it was the first time that a North Korean defector had abdicated in Hong Kong since 1996, before the United Kingdom handed the city back to China. And it’s a situation that could test Beijing’s relations with Seoul and Pyongyang.

Hong Kong resident Owen Lau Kwun-hang said the recent case of Jong Yol Ri should prompt widespread discussion among the community on how Hong Kong should be responding when defectors from North Korea surface. “At least people would know what to do … and when necessary, a well-informed society could apply pressure on relevant authorities if the status of a defector is at risk,” he said.

Largely unknown to many, the North Korean Defectors Concern (NKDC) has recently been thrust into limelight by media organizations seeking comment since the North Korean defector sought refuge in Hong Kong. Lau and three friends founded the NKDC in 2012,  a group focused on advocating for human rights and protesting Beijing’s repatriation of defectors from the secretive state.

As part of the NKDC’s advocacy and education efforts, Lau will host the annual North Korea Human Rights Film Festival at the Chinese University from August 12 to 14. The group is hoping to have a number of other North Korean defectors attend the festival for sharing sessions.

It was a chance refueling stop somewhere between the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and the border town of Sinuiju that gave four Hong Kong students a forbidden glimpse into the secretive state back in 2012. When the train stopped, Owen Lau Kwun-hang said they were confronted by a group of beggars pleading for food. “An elderly woman with her grandchildren came up to us. We gave them cakes,” Lau, now a secondary school liberal studies teacher, recalled.

[South China Morning Post]

China steps up repatriation of North Korean refugees

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China is taking a more active role in repatriating North Korean refugees, as relations between Beijing and Seoul have deteriorated in recent weeks over the deployment of THAAD. The repatriation is a break from a trend toward “looking the other way” when North Korean defectors make their way into China, a source said.

Chinese security officers now encourage local residents to report defectors, providing award money to Chinese citizens who turn in undocumented North Koreans. Chinese public security officials are offering $150 to individuals reporting a defector. For Chinese citizens who directly apprehend and turn in a defector, the award is $300. There is also a fine of $450 for anyone assisting a North Korea refugee, according to the report.

The policy has resulted in an increase of arrests and decreased chances of a successful defection, the source said.

The source also said the new measures are connected to a recent trend by the government in Beijing to come to North Korea’s defense as China has grown increasingly critical of Seoul’s decision to deploy a U.S. anti-missile defense system on the peninsula.

[UPI]

Despite international sanctions, North Korea keeps food and fuel prices stable

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The prices of food staples and fuel are reported to have remained steady in North Korea despite coming under international pressure over Kim Jong-un’s nuclear and missile programs.

A rare set of data from the country shows that so far the UN-mandated sanctions have not hurt its ordinary people as both the prices and currency have been stable. This is seen as a contrast to the economic situation under his father Kim Jong II’s leadership.

The stability is attributed to the younger Kim’s decision to introduce a booming system of jangmadang, which translates to North Korean markets that are semi-legal but regulated. The system permits wholesalers and retailers to buy and sell imported and privately-produced goods. The number of stalls in the jangmadang has reportedly grown by hundreds, according to defectors who work for Daily NK.

“Since Kim Jong-un came to power, there has been no control or crackdown on the jangmadang,” Reuters reported Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector as saying. “Keeping the markets open has had a positive effect on the people. He had no other option. He can’t feed the people, and he can’t completely shut the markets down.”

The prices of rice, corn, petrol and diesel largely remained steady over the last year. The market is said to be making up for the shortfall in sales made through the country’s centrally-planned rationing system, which reportedly has not recovered from the 1990s famine that struck the North. According to a recent World Food Programme report, the state has handed out only 360gms of rations per person per day, the lowest quantity in five years.

[International Business Times]

Former Kim bodyguard describes North Korean prison camp

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Dozens of purple scars crisscross Lee Young-guk’s lower legs. He says many are the result of beatings endured while imprisoned in Yoduk, North Korea’s most notorious prison camp. Removing his dentures, Lee shows just five or six original teeth, wonky and cracked; the only ones he has left after countless punches to the head. Being hit with the butt of a rifle, he says, left him blind in one eye.

Lee was the bodyguard to Kim Jong Il for more than 10 years. A once loyal servant of the regime, Lee says he left Kim’s employment without issues. While trying to defect to South Korea, he thrown into the infamously brutal Yodok political camp.

“If you are a political prisoner, Yodok’s main goal is to kill you,” he says. He remembers when he first arrived seeing inmates who looked like walking skeletons. “It was tough enough that they barely fed me,” he says. “What was worse was they kept on beating me, and they executed people once a week, which we were forced to watch. You have to be mentally strong, then the cycle repeats itself.”

In the five years between being arrested in China and his release for good behavior, Lee says he lost almost half his body weight. He says inmates were so weak from the lack of food, they were rarely able to life their heads unless ordered to do so by guards. If they were unable to complete their physical work for the day, Lee says they weren’t fed.

[CNN]

North Korea attempting to ban the crucifix?

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Britain’s Daily Express reports that North Korean government officials are confiscating items with crosses on labels and raiding shops for the markings. Clothing and hair clips are amongst items being inspected by Kim Jong-un’s regime which is opposed to organized religion.

It’s believed there are 300,000 Christians in North Korea. Many are forced to worship in secret and risk torture and death to do so. Under the country’s strict class system Christians are classed as “hostiles” receiving less food and harsher punishments.

A spokesman for Open Doors said: “Despite Christianity being strictly forbidden Open Doors estimates there are 200,000 – 400,000 Christians who worship in secret inside North Korea.

Kim Jong-un’s despotic regime is said to reserve its harshest punishments for Christians, with believers facing arrest, torture, imprisonment and death. It’s estimated 70,000 Christians are currently in prison or labor camps in North Korea because of their faith.

Defectors claim four church buildings in the capital of Pyongyang are used as showpieces by the authorities.

[Daily Express]