SK reveals defection of 2 top officials from NK
Print Edition
TWO senior North Korean officials, including an army colonel specializing in espionage, defected to South Korea last year, the Seoul government said yesterday.
News of the defections followed a South Korean announcement on Friday that 13 workers at a restaurant run by North Korea in an unidentified country had defected, a case it described as unprecedented, arriving in South Korea a day earlier.
South Korea did not say where the 13 had worked but China said yesterday that 13 North Koreans had been there and had left lawfully.
South Korea’s unification and defense ministries said yesterday that a North Korean army colonel defected last year and had been granted political asylum.
He had worked in the General Reconnaissance Bureau, which is focused on espionage activities against South Korea, the ministries said.
The unification ministry also said a senior diplomat posted in an African country defected last year with his family.
The defection of a high-ranking officer in the General Reconnaissance Bureau is a coup for Seoul. North Korea set up the bureau in 2009, consolidating several intelligence agencies to streamline operations aimed at South Korea.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the colonel had divulged the nature of his work to South Korean authorities.
News of the defections come after a period of tension on the Korean Peninsula following North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch the next month.
Asked about the workers yesterday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said it had received a report about a group of 13 North Koreans in China who had gone missing.
“After an investigation, (we found) the 13 North Koreans used valid passports to leave the country normally in the early hours of April 6,” Lu Kang told a regular briefing, without saying where they had gone.
“What needs to be stressed is that these people had valid identity documents and legally came to the country, not North Koreans who have entered illegally.”
South Korea’s Joongang Ilbo newspaper said the 13 worked at a restaurant in Ningbo until around Tuesday last week when they disappeared, quoting a Chinese worker at the Ryugyong Korean Restaurant.
South Korean media said the 13 left China and traveled to a Southeast Asian country before being flown to South Korea, citing unidentified government sources.
South Korea declined to comment on where the North Koreans had been before arriving in South Korea.
The two Koreas have been fierce rivals since the 1950-53 Koran War and about 29,000 people had fled North Korea and arrived in South Korea, since then, including 1,276 last year.
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