Former North Korean diplomat Tae Yong-ho has been named the new head of South Korea’s presidential advisory council on reunification.
This makes him the highest-ranking defector of the thousands of people who have settled in the South, and he is also the first to be appointed deputy minister.
Tae, 62, was Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to the UK before fleeing to South Korea in 2016.
Pyongyang has labeled him as “human scum” and accused him of embezzlement of state funds and other crimes.
Mr Tae became the first former North Korean to win a seat in South Korea’s National Assembly in 2020.
He failed to secure a second term in parliamentary elections in April, but in his new role he will advise the office of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on the peaceful reunification of Korea.
“He is the right person to help implement a peaceful unification policy based on liberal democracy and to gain support at home and abroad,” the presidential office said on Thursday.
Born in Pyongyang in 1962, Mr. Tae joined the Foreign Service at the age of 27 and served for nearly 30 years under three generations of the ruling Kim dynasty.
He said in previous statements that he left North Korea because he did not want his children to have “a miserable life.” He also expressed disgust for Kim Jong Un’s regime and admiration for South Korea’s democracy.
In his memoirs published this year, Mr Tae wrote about the excesses of the North Korean elite and the deep personality cult that has built up around the Kims.
Since his transfer he has been a strong advocate for the use of “soft power” to weaken the Kim regime and called for prisoner exchanges between the North and the South.
Tensions between the Koreas have been rising in recent months. Seoul resumed propaganda broadcasts to the North on Friday in response to Pyongyang launching thousands of balloons carrying trash into the South.
Satellite imagery reports also suggest that North Korea is increasing its military presence and building walls along its border with the South.
According to estimates by Seoul’s Unification Ministry, some 34,000 people fled from the north to the south in December last year.
Many do this by entering China and then South Korea, where they automatically get citizenship and receive some resettlement money.
Earlier this week, Seoul’s spy agency confirmed another striking overflow from a former diplomat recently stationed in Cuba.
According to local sources, the suspect is 52-year-old Ri Il Kyu, who is said to have said he had fled because of “disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future”.
“Every North Korean thinks at least once about moving to South Korea,” the Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted him as saying.
Last Sunday, South Korea celebrated North Korean Defectors Day for the first time. During the day, Mr. Yoon Suk Yeol promised better financial support for defectors and tax breaks for companies that hire North Korean defectors.
