The Guardian posted:

A senior diplomat from the North Korean embassy in London has defected in the first case of its kind since official ties were established and the embassy opened 13 years ago.

Thae Yong Ho, who vanished earlier this month with his wife and children, was based at North Korea’s suburban embassy in Ealing, west London.

Seoul’s unification ministry confirmed on Wednesday he had recently defected to South Korea with his family.

Thae is the highest-level North Korean official to have defected to South Korea, Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman at the unification ministry, told a news conference.

He was “sick and tired of the Kim Jong-un regime”, yearned for a liberal and democratic country and was worried about his children’s future, Jeong said.

Jeong suggested that the case showed that disillusionment among North Korea’s ruling class was widespread, with the regime weakening and at “breaking point”.

One of five officials at the embassy in addition to the ambassador, Thae’s job was to keep track of North Korean defectors living in London. He was also tasked with rebutting UK criticism of his country’s human rights record, South Korean media reported.

Thae’s younger son had attended a school in west London, and according to one of his classmates, he vanished in mid-July.

“We were really good friends. He was on Facebook every day and WhatsApp. Suddenly all his social media accounts went dark,” Louis Prior, 19, said.

Prior said his friend had been born in Denmark, where his father was posted. The family returned to North Korea and arrived in the UK four years ago.

Thae’s son had taken his A-levels and was about to take up a place at Imperial College London, studying maths and computer science.

“We have been really worried about him. We all tried his phone. It’s been blocked. He’s a good mate. He just vanished,” Prior said.

The defection is a coup for British and other western intelligence agencies. John Nilsson-Wright, the head of the Asia programme at Chatham House, said the diplomat could have useful insider information on Kim Jong-un’s secretive regime.

“These senior officials are smart, accomplished, well-trained individuals with high levels of English. If sent abroad they don’t spend their time going to cocktail parties. They will be energetic in other activities, including using foul means or fair,” he said.

Intelligence agencies would want to question Thae about Kim’s leadership, the stability of his regime and the fate of senior members of the previous government, some of whom have been purged and executed.

“They would want insight into the last three or four years since he took over,” Nillson-Wright said.

Nillson-Wright described relations between the UK and North Korea as complicated and variegated. Britain has had an ambassador in Pyongyang since 2001. There is an ongoing cultural dialogue, including academic exchanges whereby North Korean students can study at Cambridge university.

North Korea’s foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, is a former ambassador to London, and has close ties with the current incumbent, Hyun Hak-bong.

The original tipoff that an official had fled came from an anonymous source inside North Korea, NK News reported on Tuesday.

Defecting from North Korea is risky. The regime usually exacts revenge on relatives and friends at home. It has also been known to pursue defectors abroad and, if it finds them, to “mete out draconian punishment”, Nillson-Wright said.

NY Times posted:

SEOUL, South Korea — A high-ranking diplomat from North Korea who was based in Britain has defected to South Korea, officials in Seoul said Wednesday, making him one of the most prominent North Koreans in recent years to abandon their reclusive government.

The arrival of the diplomat, Thae Yong-ho, the No. 2 official in the North Korean Embassy in London, was announced by Jeong Joon-hee, a South Korean government spokesman, at a news conference in Seoul.

Mr. Thae’s defection, a major embarrassment for the North, was hailed as a victory for South Korea, where relations with the North have soured in recent years over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program and missile tests.

Mr. Thae is the most senior North Korean diplomat to flee the secretive nation since Jang Seung-gil, the ambassador to Egypt, defected to the United States in 1997, together with his younger brother, a North Korean diplomat in Paris.

“He is one of the most senior North Korean diplomats” to have defected, Mr. Jeong said, adding that Mr. Thae’s wife and children had come to South Korea with him.

Mr. Thae was second only to Ambassador Hyon Hak-bong at the embassy in London.

Mr. Jeong said Mr. Thae and his family had arrived in South Korea “recently.” The spokesman would not say whether the diplomat, who was being debriefed by South Korean officials, had family members left in the North or what countries, if any, he had traveled through.

The mass-circulation South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo reported on Monday that a North Korean diplomat in London had defected, citing an anonymous source. It did not identify the diplomat, but said he had defected early this month after “painstaking preparation.” By the time other embassy officials began looking for him, he was gone, the paper said.

There was no immediate reaction from North Korea to news of Mr. Thae’s defection. The North has typically called defectors “traitors” or has accused South Korea’s intelligence agency of kidnapping them.

According to Mr. Jeong, Mr. Thae told South Korean officials that he had defected because he was disillusioned with the government of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader. The diplomat also said that he yearned for the South’s freedom and democracy, and that he wanted to give his children a better future, Mr. Jeong told reporters.

“We see his defection as a sign that some of the core elite in the North are losing hope in the Kim Jong-un regime,” Mr. Jeong said, “and that the internal unity of the ruling class in the North is weakening.”

South Korean officials expressed similar views in April when 13 people working at a restaurant run by the North Korean government in China fled to the South. Officials said that unusual group defection reflected growing dissatisfaction in the North with Mr. Kim’s government.

But analysts here have cautioned against drawing such conclusions. Cheong Seong-chang, a senior North Korea analyst at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, said that isolated defections like Mr. Thae’s should not be taken as an indication of instability in the North, and that there was no sign of an organized challenge to Mr. Kim’s rule.

The South Korean government’s unusual decision to publicize high-profile defectors so soon after their arrivals, as it did with the restaurant workers in April, has led some critics to accuse it of waging a propaganda war against the North.

Under President Park Geun-hye of South Korea, the government has focused its diplomacy on persuading countries around the world to sever economic ties with North Korea. South Korean officials cited recent defectors as proof that some North Korean elites abroad were defecting, rather than facing persecution, as it became increasingly difficult to perform their missions under tightened international sanctions.

The JoongAng Ilbo, first reporting the defection of the diplomat, said he decided to flee because he feared persecution for failing to deal effectively with Britain’s growing criticism of human rights in the North. Mr. Kim, the North Korean leader, has disciplined the military and party elites with frequent reshuffling and executions in recent years.

For South Korea, defecting North Korean diplomats could bring with them an intelligence bonanza. North Korean embassies abroad often have played a crucial role in the North’s efforts to acquire equipment for its nuclear and missile programs and trade in weapons and other illicit goods to raise funds for Mr. Kim, officials in South Korea said.

North Korean diplomats abroad live under tight surveillance, ordered to monitor one another for any sign of betrayal, former defectors have said. The North Korean system also ensures that some family members of diplomats abroad are left at home in the North, effectively making them hostages to discourage defections.

But over the years, some North Korean diplomats have managed to escape. A first secretary at the North Korean Embassy in the Democratic Republic of Congo defected to the South in 1991, followed by Hyon Song-il, a North Korean diplomat based in Zambia. Upon arriving in Seoul in 1996, Mr. Hyon said he followed his wife, who had defected to the South earlier after quarreling with the ambassador, her husband’s boss. A North Korean diplomat based in Bangkok fled to Seoul in 2000 with his family.

The number of North Korean defectors arriving in South Korea dropped from 2,706 in 2011 to 1,275 last year, as Mr. Kim ordered his country to tighten border control with China, the first stop for almost all asylum seekers. The number of defectors began picking up again this year, with 749 arriving in the first six months. Mr. Jeong said recent defectors included people of “more diverse background,” including elite members.

Mr. Thae has been well known to the British news media, acting as the embassy’s main point of contact for British correspondents traveling to Pyongyang. Reuters reported that Mr. Thae spoke regularly at far-left events in London, including meetings of a British communist party where he would make impassioned speeches in defense of North Korea.

Steve Evans, a BBC Korea correspondent who had met Mr. Thae in London, remembered the North Korean as a middle-aged man who appeared to enjoy life in the suburbs of west London, where he used to reside. He frequented an Indian curry restaurant and liked to talk about family and health. He switched to tennis after his wife complained about his obsession with golf.

He was one of the North Korean minders to escort Mr. Kim’s brother, Kim Jong-chol, to an Eric Clapton concert in London last year.

Mr. Thae had been scheduled to return to Pyongyang this summer with his wife and son, Mr. Evans reported. “But he seemed so British. He seemed so at home. He seemed so middle-class, so conservative, so dapper,” he wrote. “He had never given any hint of disloyalty to the regime, not a flicker of doubt.”

swirlsofhistory posted:

Let this be a lesson: this is what happens when you lie about the Theory of the Productive Forces. Stinking Korean revisionism is lying to its people. The treachery was on FULL display in that last thread about the shitty disneyland orphanage they built -- "Look the western flies dont get as fancy orphanages for their maggots, Korean socialism is better!" It is a GIANT idol to the TOTPF. Korean revisionists say: everyone get rich because of technology; western cowboys say: everyone gets rich because of technology. Well okay, the proof is in the pudding as they say, and one side got all the pudding. If covering up the the universal lessons of global class struggle is homicidal revisionism, the TOTPF is its poison dagger.

Horselord posted:

i used to be in the CPGB-ML

catchphrase

aerdil posted:

its at that point comrade you take half an hour before the meeting to draw up a discussion plan and sections of interest to educate the two others who show up. a well-informed vanguard of three can change the world, red salute

how you expect my dumb ass to play teacher when i know nothing and am also not very smart. like what you're suggesting is far above both my confidence and my ability

aerdil posted:

its at that point comrade you take half an hour before the meeting to draw up a discussion plan and sections of interest to educate the two others who show up. a well-informed vanguard of three can change the world, red salute

also this is more advice than i was ever told in in an entire year of asking the party, including to literally joti brar