Former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho urges others to defect to the South to ‘achieve the dream of reunification’
- Jo Song-gil, the North’s acting ambassador to Rome, went into hiding with his wife in November and is seeking asylum
- Thae has become a public speaker giving speeches about the reality of his impoverished but nuclear-armed former homeland
A former North Korean diplomat who defected to the South urged a former colleague missing in Italy to come and settle in Seoul on Saturday, as the rare asylum bid makes global headlines.
Jo Song-gil, the North’s acting ambassador to Rome, went into hiding with his wife in November and is seeking asylum, according to Seoul’s intelligence authorities. It would be the first high-profile defection of a North Korean diplomat since 2016 when the then deputy ambassador to London, Thae Yong-ho, switched sides to settle in Seoul.
Jo has not contacted Seoul’s spy agency since he went into hiding, suggesting he was seeking asylum in a third country in the West, possibly the US, according to several media reports.
But Thae, who said he once worked with Jo at Pyongyang’s foreign ministry, wrote an open letter urging his ex-colleague to come to the South instead and work together to help the two Koreas reunify.
“I thought that I knew a lot about the South … through the internet while serving overseas. But the South I actually experienced was far more democratic and economically prosperous than I imagined,” Thae said in the letter posted on his blog.
“Sure, the South is not exactly a paradise. But it is a place where you and I could achieve the dream we all have,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be our lifelong mission as diplomats to help the two Koreas reunify … and to pass the unified peninsula to our children?”