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North Korean defector says Kim Jong-un control is crumbling

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Seoul, South Korea: The highest-ranking defector from North Korea in years said on Wednesday that the days of the country's leadership were "numbered," and that its attempts to control outside information were not working because of corruption and discontent.

"I am sure that more defections of my colleagues will take place, since North Korea is already on a slippery slope," the defector, Thae Yong-ho, said during a news conference in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. "The traditional structures of the North Korean system are crumbling."

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Thae had been the North's No. 2 diplomat in London until he fled to the South last summer with his family. South Korea has hailed his defection as a sign of growing disillusionment among North Korean elites with the country's leader, Kim Jong-un. Since December, Thae has given a series of interviews to share his dire view of today's North Korea.

Thae's diagnosis of Kim's rule is hardly new. Defectors from the North, as well as some conservative analysts and policymakers in the South, widely share that view. Still, it signalled a drastic change of roles for Thae.

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Before his defection, he was a career diplomat, fluent in English, who had served in Britain, Denmark and Sweden, often delivering passionate speeches glorifying the Kim family that has ruled North Korea for seven decades. In the South, Thae, now affiliated with the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank arm of the National Intelligence Service, has vowed to spend the rest of his life trying to bring down the North Korean government.

Thae said he had high expectations when Kim took power after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011. Schooled for several years in Switzerland, Kim Jong-un was expected to help modernise his impoverished country. Instead, he resorted to a "reign of terror" by executing scores of officials, including his uncle Jang Song Thaek, whom he thought posed a challenge to his power, Thae said.

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The former diplomat said he had come up with a detailed plan for his defection, first ensuring that his two sons joined him and his wife in London. (North Korean diplomats are required to leave a child in the North, a measure intended to prevent their defection.) He declined to reveal details of his defection plan and the circumstances.

While in London, his sons began asking questions, like why the North Korean government executed people in public without a proper trial, Thae said. Their English friends taunted them with questions, like why Kim had smoked a cigarette inside a nursery.

The day Thae broached his plan for defection with his sons, he told them that he wanted to break the "chain of slavery" for them, he recalled. They wanted to know if they would have free access to the internet, books and movies in the South, he said.

The best way to force change in the isolated North, he continued, is to disseminate outside information there to help ordinary citizens eventually rebel. South Korean TV dramas and movies smuggled from China are already popular in the North, he said. 

New York Times