North Korean defector to join South Korea’s main opposition party and run in parliamentary elections

‘His courage and decision will give hope to North Korean refugees and other South and North Korean people who are wishing for genuine unification,’ says party

Thae Yong Ho, former North Korean diplomat, who defected to South Korea in 2016, speaks to the media in Seoul, South Korea (AP)

A high-level North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea in 2016 will join the latter’s main opposition party and run in April parliamentary elections, said party officials.

Thae Yong Ho, former minister at the North Korean Embassy in London and the highest-level diplomat to defect, will run as part of the conservative opposition party Liberty Korea Party in a Seoul constituency on 15 April.

Kim Hyong-o, head of a party committee on candidate selections, told local reporters: “His courage and decision will give hope to North Korean refugees and other South and North Korean people who are wishing for genuine unification.”

If elected, Mr Thae would become the second North Korean defector to win a seat in South Korea’s single-chamber National Assembly.

Former North Korean Cho Myung-Chul was the first and served as a representative for a predecessor of the Liberty Korea Party from 2012 to 2016.

Mr Thae went to live in South Korea with his family in 2016 and has been a vocal figure in his criticism of his former country’s authoritarian government.

He is the most senior North Korean diplomat to defect, a rarity among senior officials. Prior to him, the highest-level North Korean to seek asylum in the neighbouring country was Hwan Jang-yop, a senior ruling Workers’ Party official.

Hwang once tutored premier Kim Jong-Un’s father, the late Kim Jong Il, and died in 2010.

Mr Thae told reporters his decision to flee the hermit kingdom was because he didn’t want his children to live “miserable” lives there and he was disappointed in Kim.

“When Kim Jong-un first came to power, I was hopeful that he would make reasonable and rational decisions to save North Korea from poverty, but I soon fell into despair watching him purging officials for no proper reasons,” he said during his first foreign news conference in 2017.

North Korea was in turn scathing in its criticism of Mr Thae, calling him “human scum” and accusing him of embezzling government money, leaking confidential secrets and sexually assaulting a child.

Additional reporting by agencies