Former North Korean diplomat Tae Yong-ho has been named the brand new chief of South Korea’s presidential advisory council on unification.
This makes him the highest-ranking defector among the many hundreds who’ve resettled within the South – and the primary to be given a vice-ministerial job.
Tae, 62, was Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to the UK earlier than he fled to South Korea in 2016.
Pyongyang has denounced him as “human scum” and accused him of embezzling state funds and different crimes.
Mr Tae turned the primary former North Korean to win a seat in South Korea’s 2020 Nationwide Meeting.
He didn’t safe a second time period in parliamentary elections in April, however in his new function, he will probably be be advising South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s workplace on peaceable Korean unification.
“He’s the correct particular person to assist set up a peaceable unification coverage primarily based on liberal democracy and garner help from dwelling and overseas,” the presidential workplace stated on Thursday.
Born in Pyongyang in 1962, Mr Tae entered the international service on the age of 27 and spent nearly 30 years working below three generations of the ruling Kim dynasty.
He stated in earlier statements that he left North Korea as a result of he didn’t need his youngsters to have “depressing lives”. He additionally cited disgust with Kim Jong Un’s regime and expressed admiration for South Korea’s democracy.
In a memoir revealed this 12 months, Mr Tae wrote concerning the excesses of the North Korean elite and the depths of the character cult constructed across the Kims.
Since his defection, he has advocated for using “gentle energy” to weaken the Kim regime and referred to as for prisoner swaps between the North and the South.
Tensions between the Koreas have risen over the previous few months, with Seoul resuming propaganda broadcasts in the direction of the North on Friday, in response to Pyongyang floating hundreds of trash-carrying balloons into the South.
Stories primarily based on satellite tv for pc imagery additionally recommend that North Korea could also be strengthening its navy presence and constructing partitions alongside its border with the South.
As of December final 12 months, some 34,000 people have defected from the North to the South, in line with estimates from Seoul’s Unification Ministry.
Many achieve this by crossing into China after which to South Korea. In South Korea, they robotically obtain citizenship and are given some resettlement cash.
Earlier this week, Seoul’s spy company cofirmed one other high-profile defection of a former diplomat most lately stationed in Cuba.
Native stories recognized the person as 52-year-old Ri Il Kyu and quoted him as saying that he fled due to “disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future”.
“Each North Korean thinks at the very least as soon as about residing in South Korea,” the Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted him as saying.
Final Sunday, South Korea marked its very first North Korean Defectors’ Day, throughout which Mr Yoon Suk Yeol promised higher monetary help for defectors and tax incentives for firms that rent them.
