A North Korean diplomat in Cuba defects to South Korea : NPR

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s intelligence agency said Tuesday that a senior North Korean diplomat in Cuba has defected to South Korea, the latest defection by North Korea’s ruling elite and likely a blow to leader Kim Jong Un’s efforts to consolidate his leadership.

The National Intelligence Service said media reports about the defection of a Cuban adviser on North Korean political affairs were true. A brief statement from the NIS public relations office gave no further details.

South Korean tabloid Chosun Ilbo reported on Tuesday that diplomat Lee Il-kyu had fled to South Korea with his wife and children in November.

The Chosun Ilbo reported that Ri said in the interview that he decided to defect due to disappointment with North Korea’s political system, unfair job evaluations by the North Korean Foreign Ministry and the ministry’s refusal to approve his request to go to Mexico for treatment for nerve damage. Ri said that because of international sanctions, Cuban hospitals do not have the medical equipment necessary to treat his health problems.

Other South Korean media outlets issued similar reports late Tuesday.

North Korea did not immediately respond to South Korea’s announcement of Ri’s defection. It has previously accused South Korea of ​​kidnapping or encouraging its citizens to defect and has expressed anger at the defections of some prominent figures. It has also described some defectors as traitors or criminals fleeing punishment.

Ri defected before South Korea and Cuba established diplomatic ties in February, and experts say the incident is likely to be a political blow to North Korea, whose diplomatic base relies heavily on a few Cold War-era allies like Cuba.

Before his defection, Ri was involved in efforts to block Cuba’s attempts to open diplomatic ties with South Korea, the Korea News Agency reported. Ri was commended by Kim Jong Un for his role in negotiations with Panama that led to the release of a ship seized in 2013 that was allegedly carrying prohibited goods, including missiles and fighter jet parts, the agency said. At the time, Ri was third secretary at the North Korean embassy in Cuba, the agency said.

History of defections from North Korea

About 34,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea, mostly since the late 1990s, fleeing economic hardship and political repression. Many of them are women from North Korea’s impoverished northern regions, but the number of professional and well-educated North Koreans defecting to South Korea has been steadily increasing in recent years.

According to South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, about 10 people classified as North Korea’s elite resettled in South Korea in 2023, a higher figure than in recent years. Unification ministry officials say the increase in high-ranking defections is likely due to North Korea’s pandemic-related economic difficulties and moves to tighten state control over its people. Those who had to stay overseas longer than originally planned due to COVID-19 restrictions were exposed to a freer foreign culture for an extended period of time.

“Ri played a key role in representing North Korea’s interests in Havana, so the defection of this senior official is a further wound in North Korea,” said Leif Eric Easley, an international studies professor at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul.

“There’s no doubt that the Kim regime is taking steps to make it harder for foreign diplomats to defect, but increased repression could further isolate Pyongyang and lead to more defections,” Easley said.

Moon Seong-mook, an expert at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Strategy, said news of a defection by a senior official like Ri would spread among North Korean diplomats and others and could deal a major blow to Kim Jong Un, but it was unlikely to immediately lead to the collapse of his regime.

Few North Korea watchdog groups question Kim Jong Un’s grip on power, but observers say he is grappling with chronic economic difficulties, the influence of South Korean pop culture and growing U.S.-South Korean military cooperation.

The most high-profile defections of recent years What happened in 2016Thae Yong-ho, who was then North Korea’s envoy in London, arrived in South Korea and said he had decided to flee because he was “desperate” over Kim Jong-un’s executions of senior officials and his development of nuclear weapons, and he did not want his children to live a “miserable” life in North Korea.

North Korea has called him “human scum” and accused him of embezzlement and other crimes. Thae was elected to South Korea’s National Assembly in 2020.

In 2019, North Korea’s acting ambassador to Italy, Cho Song-gil, arrived in South Korea. Also in 2019, North Korea’s acting ambassador to Kuwait visited South Korea with his family.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen in recent months as North Korea has launched garbage-filled balloons into South Korea and conducted missile tests. North Korea claims its balloon campaigns are in retaliation for South Korean activists who have been using its balloons to drop political leaflets.

Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un and a senior official, warned South Korea on Tuesday of “terrible” consequences after leaflets sent by South Korea were found again in North Korea. She issued a similar warning on Sunday. South Korea responded to the North’s previous balloon activity by suspending a de-escalation agreement it signed with Pyongyang in 2018.