Ex-North Korean diplomat appointed a vice minister in South Korea, the highest post for any defector

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s president on Thursday appointed a former North Korean diplomat as a vice minister, the highest-level government job for any of the thousands of North Koreans who have resettled in South Korea.

Tae Yongho was a minister of the North Korean Embassy in London when he defected to South Korea in 2016. Tae is the highest-ranking North Korean who has resettled in South Korea in recent years. He has said he did so because he didn’t want his children to live “miserable” lives in North Korea and he fell into “despair” over leader Kim Jong Un’s executions of officials and nuclear ambitions.

North Korea called him “human scum” and accused him of embezzling government money and committing other crimes.

President Yoon Suk Yeol appointed Tae secretary general the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, which gives the president policy advice on peaceful Korean unification.

The appointment made Tae the first North Korean defector appointed to a vice-ministerial job in South Korea, among about 34,000 North Koreans who have resettled in South Korea, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry.

In 2020, Tae was elected to South Korea’s parliament. There have been other North Korean defectors who have served as lawmakers in South Korea.

Yoon’s office said in a statement that Tae was the right person for the post because he can utilize his living experience in North Korea and work experiences as a member of South Korean’s parliament’s committee on foreign policy and unification issues.

Most of the defectors left North Korea after a devastating famine in the mid-1990s. Upon arrival in South Korea, North Korean defectors are given citizenships, almost-free apartments, resettlement money and other benefits. But coming from authoritarian, impoverished and nominally socialist North Korea, many experience diverse discrimination and severe difficulties in adjusting to new lives in capitalistic, highly competitive South Korea, according to their interviews and surveys.

Yoon promised to provide greater government support to improve the lives of North Korean defectors on the inaugural “North Korean Defectors’ Day” on Sunday.

Most of the North Korean defectors are women from the North’s poorer northern regions along the a long, porous border with China. But in recent years, the number of North Korean elites to flee to South Korea has steadily increased, according to the Unification Ministry.

On Tuesday, South Korea’s spy agency said that Ri Il Kyu, a counselor of political affairs at the North Korean Embassy in Cuba, had defected to South Korea last November.