Lawmakers say the North Korean diplomat left for South Korea

That would make him one of the oldest North Koreans to be defective in recent years. North Korea, which calls itself a socialist paradise, is extremely sensitive about desertions, especially among its elite, and has sometimes insisted that they are South Korean or American plots to undermine its government.

Ha said he was told that the diplomat, who changed his name to Ryu Hyun-woo after arriving in the South, had escaped through a South Korean diplomatic mission, but that espionage officials did not specify where. Ha said espionage officials did not provide specific details as to why Ryu decided to defect.

The office of Kim Byung-kee, a lawmaker from the ruling Liberal Party and the other executive secretary of the intelligence committees, said he was also told that Ryu was now living in South Korea. Kims aides did not elaborate further.

The NIS and South Korean Ministry of Unification, which deals with inter-Korean affairs, did not independently confirm Ryus’s departure when it arrived from The Associated Press.

The Kuwaiti Ministry of Information did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A cell phone number once associated with the North Korean Embassy there was heard unanswered on Tuesday.

North Korean state media have not yet commented on Ryus’s situation.

The North has been known to maintain silence about desertions such as the defecting of its former ambassador to Italy in 2018 in part to avoid highlighting its government’s weaknesses.

North Korea has long used its diplomats to develop sources of earning money abroad, and experts have said it is possible that the diplomats who left may have struggled to meet financial demands from authorities in the country.

The mismanaged economy of the North has been devastated by US-led sanctions over its nuclear program, which strengthened significantly in 2016 and 2017 amid provocative testing in nuclear and weapons tests.

The North Korean Embassy in the City of Kuwait serves as its only diplomatic post in the Gulf region. Pyongyang once had thousands of workers working in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates before the United Nations increased sanctions on North Korean labor exports, which had been a significant source of foreign revenue for Pyongyang .

In his most recent letter to the United Nations in March 2020, Kuwait said it had banned the issuance of work permits to North Koreans and expelled those working in the country. The UAE said it expelled all North Korean workers by the end of December 2019. Oman and Qatar did not provide updates from 2019 and 2018 respectively.

In September 2017, the Kuwaiti government expelled the North Korean ambassador and four other diplomats following Pyongyangs’ nuclear and missile tests. Ryu reportedly intervened as interim ambassador after that.

Ryu appears to have fled a few months after North Korean ambassador to Italy Jo Song Gil disappeared with his wife in late 2018. Ha and other lawmakers told reporters last year that they learned Jo was living in South Korea under government protection after arriving in July 2019.

Jo was probably North Korea’s highest-ranking official who fled to the South since the arrival in 1997 of a senior Labor Party official who once served as tutor to leader Kim Jong Uns’s father, the leader of felt Kim Jong Il.

Tae Young Ho, a former minister at the North Korean Embassy in London who left the South in 2016 and was elected as lawmaker representing the Has party last year, said in a Facebook post that Ryus’s departure would shock members of North Korea’s ruling elite because he appears to be the son-in-law of Jon Il Chun, who once oversaw an office of the ruling party that ran the Kim families ’secret money operations. The Associated Press cannot independently verify Taes’ claim.

More than 33,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, according to South Korean government data. Many deserters have said they are escaping severe political oppression and poverty, while elites like Tae have expressed dissatisfaction with the dynastic leadership of the countries.

Tae has said he decided to flee because he did not want his children to lead miserable lives in North Korea and that he was disappointed with Kim Jong Un, who said he terrorized North Korean elites with executions and purges. while consolidating power and aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons.

North Korea has called Tae human filth and accused him of embezzling government money and committing other crimes without presenting specific evidence.

Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell contributed to this story from Dubai.

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