SEOUL – North Korea’s acting ambassador to Kuwait has defected to South Korea, the latest in a recent series of high-profile escapes from the isolated country, a South Korean lawmaker said Monday.
Ryu Hyun Woo has led North Korea’s embassy in Kuwait since former ambassador So Chang Sik was suspended after a 2017 UN resolution sought to reduce the country’s overseas diplomatic missions.
According to Tae Yong Ho, who was North Korea’s deputy ambassador to Britain before settling in the South in 2016 and was elected legislator last year, Ryu defected to South Korea last September.
Kuwait was a major source of foreign exchange for Pyongyang, which sent thousands of workers there, mostly for construction projects.
Tae said Ryu is also the son-in-law of Jon Il Chun, who once oversaw a Labor Party bureau responsible for running the secret coffee shop of the ruling Kim family, called Room 39.
The National Intelligence Service declined to comment.
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Ryu’s apostasy may be a sign that the North Korean elite that is building leader Kim Jong Un’s power base has slowly but surely drifted away from him, Tae said.
Ryu fled several months after Jo Song Gil, who was the acting ambassador of North Korea to Italy, disappeared from the embassy with his wife and reappeared in South Korea.
Tae told Reuters that the knowledge and experiences of the outside world he gained as a diplomat sparked disillusionment among his family, and he decided to escape to give his children ‘freedom’, asking other officials the example should follow.
“I want to tell my colleagues working around the world and the North Korean elite that there is an alternative to North Korea and that the door is open,” Tae said in an interview at the recent Reuters Next conference. said.