South Korea appoints North Korean defector as minister

Tae Yongho was Pyongyang’s deputy envoy to the UK before defecting in 2016

South Korea has appointed a former North Korean diplomat as a vice minister, making him the highest-ranking defector in the country.

President Yoon Suk Yeol appointed Tae Yongho secretary general of the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, which gives the leader policy advice on peaceful Korean unification.

Mr Tae, 62, was the North's deputy envoy to the UK before defecting in 2016. He was forced to flee because he did not want his children to live “miserable lives” in North Korea, he said.

Mr Tae claimed that he fell into “despair” over leader Kim Jong-Un’s alleged executions of government officials and nuclear ambitions.

Pyongyang denounced him as a “human scum” and accused him of embezzling public money and committing other crimes.

Mr Tae’s appointment made him the first North Korean defector appointed to a vice-ministerial job in South Korea, where nearly 34,000 North Koreans have resettled over the years.

Mr Tae was elected to South Korea's national assembly in 2020 but could not secure a second term in April’s parliamentary election. Several North Korean defectors besides him have served as lawmakers in the South.

The president's office said on Thursday that Mr Tae was the right person for the post because he could utilise his experiences living in the North and working on South Korea’s parliamentary committee on foreign policy and unification issues.

Most defectors from the North left after a devastating famine in the 1990s. They were mostly women from the poorer northern regions, which share a long and porous border with China. In recent years, however, the number of North Korean elites fleeing to the South has steadily increased, as per the country’s unification ministry.

A defector from the North is given citizenship, almost-free housing, resettlement money and other benefits upon arrival in the South.

But coming from an authoritarian and nominally socialist North Korea, many experience discrimination and severe difficulties in adjusting to new lives in capitalistic, highly competitive South Korea, according to their interviews and surveys.

Speaking at the inaugural “North Korean Defectors’ Day” on Sunday, Mr Yoon promised to provide greater government support to improve the lives of North Korean defectors.

South Korea’s spy agency this week announced that Ri Il Kyu, a counsellor of political affairs at the North’s embassy in Cuba, defected to Seoul last November.

Mr Ri said he did not reveal his plan even to his family until hours before he pulled off the escape. “I bought flight tickets and called my wife and kid to tell them about my decision, six hours before the defection,” the former diplomat said. “I didn’t say South Korea, but said, let’s live abroad.”

Meanwhile, South Korea's military said that it was resuming nonstop loudspeaker broadcasting of propaganda targeting North Korea in response to what it called the "despicable, shameful and vulgar" launch of balloons by Pyongyang carrying trash across the border.

The loudspeaker broadcasts and the balloons, which South Korean activists have also launched over the years with anti-North propaganda leaflets, have escalated tension between the two Koreas.

The two countries are still technically at war since an armistice ended the 1950-1953 Korean War, not a peace treaty.

Additional reporting by agencies.