SEOUL – North Korea’s interim ambassador to Kuwait defected to South Korea, the latest in a recent series of high-level escapes from the isolated country, a South Korean lawmaker said on Monday.
Ryu Hyun Woo has headed the North Korean embassy in Kuwait since former ambassador So Chang Sik was expelled after a 2017 UN resolution sought to curtail the country’s diplomatic missions abroad.
Ryu defected to South Korea last September, according to Tae Yong Ho, who was North Korea’s deputy ambassador to Britain before settling in the South in 2016 and being elected legislator last year.
Kuwait was an important source of foreign currency for Pyongyang, which sent thousands of workers there, mainly for construction projects.
Tae said that Ryu is also the son-in-law of Jon Il Chun, who has supervised a Workers Party bureau responsible for managing the secret coffers of the ruling Kim family, dubbed Sala 39.
The National Intelligence Service declined to comment.
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Ryu’s defection could be a sign that the North Korean elite that sustains leader Kim Jong Un’s power base is moving away from him slowly but steadily, Tae said.
Ryu fled several months after Jo Song Gil, who was North Korea’s ambassador to Italy, disappeared with his wife from the embassy and resurfaced in South Korea.
Tae told Reuters that the knowledge and experience of the outside world gained as a diplomat fueled his family’s disillusionment, and he decided to flee to “give freedom” to his children, asking other officials to do the same.
“I want to give my colleagues who work around the world and the North Korean elites that there is an alternative to North Korea and that the door is open,” Tae said in an interview at the recent Reuters Next conference.