High-ranking Nokor diplomat defected to South
SEOUL—A high-ranking North Korean diplomat stationed in Cuba defected to South Korea last November—just months before Seoul and Havana established diplomatic ties, Seoul’s spy agency said on Tuesday.
North Korean diplomat Ri Il Kyu had been at Pyongyang’s embassy in Cuba since 2019 and was tasked specifically “with obstructing the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Cuba,” according to the South’s Chosun Daily.
Ri defected with his wife and children in early November, making him the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat known to have defected since Thae Yong Ho, Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to Britain, in 2016, the report said.
South Korea’s spy agency told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday that it was “true” there had been a “defection of the counselor of political affairs from the North Korean embassy in Cuba,” without giving further details.
Seoul’s unification ministry has previously flagged a rising number of defections by North Korean elites, which they said made up around 10 of the 196 defections in 2023, the highest in years.
Establishing ties
Around three months after Ri’s reported defection, Seoul and Havana—which is one of Pyongyang’s oldest allies, and a fellow communist state—announced they were establishing diplomatic ties.
In an exclusive interview with South Korea’s Chosun Daily, Ri said he decided to defect after Pyongyang rejected his request to seek medical treatment in Mexico despite Cuba lacking specialist equipment to treat him for an injury.
He also claimed to have received unfair performance reviews after rejecting a demand for bribes from a senior foreign ministry official in Pyongyang in August 2019 to discuss opening a North Korean restaurant in Cuba.
“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea,” he told the Chosun Daily.
“Disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future led me to consider defection.”
Ri also told the newspaper that North Korea’s former foreign minister Ri Yong Ho and his family had been sent to a political prisoner camp in December 2019 on “suspicion of corruption,” over a bribery case involving the country’s embassy in Beijing.
