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Son of high-profile South Korean defector 'moves to North Korea' Son of high-profile South Korean defector 'moves to North Korea'
(about 1 hour later)
The son of the highest-profile South Korean to defect to North Korea has arrived in Pyongyang to settle permanently, state media have said. The son of the highest-profile South Korean ever to defect to North Korea has reportedly defected to the communist state in a rare switch of political allegiance.
If confirmed, it would be an unusual case of a South Korean defecting to the impoverished, authoritarian North Korea. Choe In-guk said he had decided to “permanently resettle”in North Korea to honour his parents’ wish that he lived there and devoted himself to the unification of the Korean peninsula, according to North Korea’s propaganda website Uriminzokkiri.
The Uriminzokkiri news website reported that Choe In-guk had arrived in North Korea’s capital on Saturday “to dedicate his life to Korean unification at the guidance of leader Kim Jong-un”. The website published photos and footage showing Choe, wearing glasses and a beret, reading his arrival statement at Pyongyang’s international airport. His father, Choe Dok-shin, was a former South Korean foreign minister who emigrated to the US in 1976 with his wife, Ryu Mi-yong, after political disputes with Park Chung-hee, the then South Korean president.
Choe said he was more than 70 years old and had decided to live out his life in North Korea because it was among his parents’ “dying wishes” for him to follow North Korea and work for its unification with South Korea, according to a written statement published on the website. They defected to North Korea a decade later, leaving behind two sons and three daughters.
Choe is the son of the former foreign minister Choe Dok-shin, who defected with his wife to North Korea in 1986 after political disputes with the then president, Park Chung-hee. He died in 1989. Choe Dok-shin died three years later, while Ryu went on to hold high-profile positions in North Korea, including membership of the presidium of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament and chair of a minor political party that is effectively controlled by the ruling Workers’ party of North Korea.
Observers say North Korea accepted Choe In-guk because it can use him as a propaganda tool to tell its citizens its system is superior to South Korea’s. Kim is struggling to revive his country’s moribund economy and improve public livelihoods as the US refuses to agree on major sanctions relief until he takes significant steps towards nuclear disarmament. After her death in 2016, aged 95, Ryu was given a public funeral and buried alongside her husband at Pyongyang’s Patriotic Martyrs cemetery.
South Korea’s unification ministry said Choe In-guk was in North Korea without special permission from the Seoul government to visit. The ministry spokesman Lee Sang-min told reporters on Monday that authorities were trying to find out details about Choe’s travel. Choe In-guk’s arrival in Pyongyang at the weekend is a minor propaganda coup for North Korea, as it struggles with international sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes.
The two Koreas, which have been split along the world’s most heavily fortified border for about 70 years, bar their citizens from visiting each other’s territory and exchanging phone calls, letters or emails without special permissions. Since the end of the 1950-53 Korean war, more than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea to avoid political repression and poverty. The regime is expected to use his defection to claim that life is better in North Korea than on the southern side of the heavily fortified border that has separated the countries for more than 65 years.
Uriminzokkiri published images of Choe, 73, receiving flowers on his arrival at Pyongyang’s international airport on Saturday.
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South Koreans have occasionally defected to North Korea, but it has become a rarity in recent years, particularly since the North Korean famine in the mid-1990s, which is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people. He said, according to the website: “To live in and follow a country for which I feel thankful is a path to protect the will left by my parents. So I’ve decided to permanently live in North Korea, albeit belatedly.”
Before his death, the senior Choe held high-level posts in North Korea such as vice-chairman of the committee for the peaceful reunification of the fatherland, and head of the Chondoist Chongu party (CCP), a political group affiliated with a Korean native religion called Chondo. South Korea’s unification ministry said Choe had not been granted special permission to make his latest visit to North Korea, but added he had made a dozen trips there since 2001, including to attend his mother’s funeral.
His wife, Ryu Mi-yong, was a member of the presidium of North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament and chairwoman of the central committee of the CCP. She died, aged 95, in 2016. South Korean media said he had flown to Pyongyang via Beijing on a North Korean government-issued visa.
South Korea’s unification ministry said Choe In-guk had been allowed to make 12 authorised trips to North Korea since 2001 for events such as visiting his parents’ grave and attending a death anniversary for his mother. More than 30,000 North Koreans have fled poverty, famine and political repression to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean war.
It wasn’t immediately known how he had travelled to North Korea, but South Korean media speculated he had flown from Beijing with a North Korean government-issued visa. Before his latest trip to North Korea, Choe was a member of a Chondo church in South Korea and was engaged in inter-Korean engagement movements, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified church official. While it is rare for South Koreans to defect to North Korea, a small number of North Koreans who escaped to South Korea have said they wanted to return home.
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