Former North Korean ambassador to Kuwait (Korean name) Ryu Hyun-woo, who was confirmed to have settled in South Korea after exile in September 2019, recklessly visited the South Korean embassy in Kuwait at the time of his exile, and it is known that he arrived in Seoul in just a few days.
Former Ambassador Ryu talked with Maeil Business Daily on the 25th, sparingly on the specific reasons for the asylum. Former Ambassador Ryu said, “I’ve been working hard to read articles in the Korean media, and it was amazing that the country was running well even though it seemed to fight and conflict every day.” In particular, when he was in Kuwait before exile, former Ambassador Ryu, who watched the candlelight revolution through the media, said, “I thought it was a really great country.”
Former Ambassador Ryu also said, “I want to talk about accurate information about North Korean society in the future without distortion or exaggeration in South Korea.” He said, “There are a lot of exaggerated or misleading stories about North Korea that can be encountered in the South Korean media,” he said. “I want to convey what I know about the reality as it is.”
According to former Ambassador Ryu, he came to Korea in September 2019. It has been two months since July 2019, when former North Korean ambassador to Italy, Cho Sung-gil, stepped on the Korean soil.
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– Former North Korean ambassador to Kuwait Ryu Hyun-woo (Korean name) chose asylum in just five days when he faced a sudden threat to his personal life in Kuwait in September 2019. He did not talk about specific reasons for asylum, such as what kind of crisis Ryu faced in Kuwait, but experts pointed out that the pressure and surveillance of the North Korean authorities’ overseas missions increased after the Kim Jong-un regime.
North Korean sources analyzed that it is not irrelevant to the reality that dissatisfaction with the Kim Jong-un regime is spreading among North Korean diplomats. Considering that the father-in-law of the former Ambassador Ryu was the former chief of the Labor Party Room 39, which is the core power of North Korea, it is presumed that the North Korean authorities are punishing diplomats’ mistakes with very strict standards.
On the 25th, when the affiliation of former Ambassador Ryu’s settlement in South Korea became known late, on the 25th, Rep. Tae Young-ho said through Facebook that “Kim Jong-un will not be able to prevent North Korean diplomats dreaming of freedom from entering the Republic of Korea.”
He said, “If you were the son-in-law of the head of Room 39 in North Korea and even served as a temporary ambassador as a diplomat, he has lived as a privileged class. That is why he chose asylum to Korea with his family.” Even if you come out abroad and have a concept of comparison, you have no choice but to change your mind.” In a call with Maeil Economic Daily, Congressman Tae emphasized, “The fact that the son-in-law of Jeon Il-chun, who was a key North Korean leader, has fled to Korea is a reflection of how uneasy the Kim Jong-un regime is.
– Experts analyzed that the reality of North Korea, which faces serious economic difficulties due to increasingly imprisoned sanctions against North Korea, is in the background of diplomats’ successive trips to South Korea. It is expected that pressure and surveillance on diplomats would have been further strengthened in a situation where the US and the international community tightened sanctions against North Korea and tightened diplomatic pressures such as expulsion of ambassadors. In addition, it is a message that the level of mutual monitoring and punishment by the authorities is increasing even more among members of overseas missions amid the crisis of system instability.
A North Korean defector who was well versed in Pyongyang’s internal affairs explained, “The strengthening of surveillance and control is a testament to the growing discord with the North Korean regime.” He said, “As we try to deal with the current system insecurity, we set stronger measures and standards than before, and the level of punishment is raised.” “Diplomats who have heard of all kinds of purge in Pyongyang always carry with them the anxiety that they may suffer,” he explained.
Another source on North Korea said, “In the case of diplomats, when they return to Pyongyang after completing their overseas term of office (usually three years), they receive a’censorship summary’ for all things that have happened for three years, but they can’t get caught.” This is the background that raises the possibility of feeling threatened to a level of risk of life when a minor mistake that could be passed on was discovered before.
It is worth noting that North Korean diplomats recently chose South Korea rather than a third country such as the United States. Han-beom Cho, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, explained, “It seems likely that the United States has taken into account anxiety over the uncertainty of the Donald Trump regime, and that in Europe, the environment in which personal protection cannot be properly achieved.”
It is also noteworthy how North Korea will view their travel to South Korea. Research Fellow Cho said, “There is no expectation of a separate reaction in North Korea,” he predicted. “We will judge that talking about the news of the successive asylums of the upper class may rather cause system instability.” In fact, the North Korean authorities did not show any external reaction to the news of exile by former North Korean ambassador to Italy Jo Sung-gil.
The Korean government hasn’t responded much. On this day, a senior official from the Ministry of Unification said, “There is no content that the Ministry of Unification can confirm on issues that North Korean defectors or those who are equivalent to them have entered the country.”
As the news of former Ambassador Ryu’s asylum is known, the Moon Jae-in administration’s loneliness for North Korean defectors is also rising. An expert on North Korea explained, “After the Moon Jae-in administration, qualified North Korean defectors are having a hard time advancing to related institutions.” For example, the National Security Strategy Research Institute (Strategy Institute), which has employed a large number of high-level North Korean defectors, is known to have not newly hired a single North Korean defector from the current government.
[최희석 기자 / 연규욱 기자]
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