North Korea’s top diplomat in Italy the latest high-profile defector to flee Kim regime
- South Korea’s intelligence agency said Jo Song-gil and his wife fled the embassy in Rome in late November
- Italian authorities said they were ‘protecting him in a safe place’
North Korea’s top diplomat in Italy has become the latest high-ranking official to defect from the socialist regime, disappearing from the embassy with his wife late last year.
South Korean lawmaker Kim Min-ki, of the ruling Democratic Party, said the deputy head of the National Intelligence Service, Seo Dong-goo, told parliament’s intelligence committee that acting North Korea ambassador Jo Song-gil, 48, “disappeared” with his wife in November.
“The NIS says Jo and his wife fled from the embassy in early November,” the lawmaker told journalists, adding Jo was supposed to return home after his tenure in Rome ended in November.
It was unclear whether Jo was accompanied by his children or where he was seeking asylum.
According to South Korea’s Joongang Ilbo daily newspaper, Jo had asked Italian authorities for protection in early December, in an attempt to flee to an unknown country.
Italian authorities were “agonising” over what to do but were “protecting him in a safe place”, the newspaper quoted an unnamed official as saying.