Senior North Korean Diplomat Defects to South Korea from Cuba

South Korean media revealed Tuesday that senior North Korean diplomat Ri Il-kyu, 52, defected from the North Korean embassy in Cuba in November.

Ri’s secretive defection made him the highest-ranking North Korean official to escape to South Korea since 2016.

South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo revealed on Tuesday that Ri was a Cuba expert working for the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was sent to Cuba in 1999 to manage political affairs between the two communist tyrannies and to do whatever he could to thwart “the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Cuba.”

In 2013, Ri helped to negotiate the release of a North Korean ship named Chong Chon Gang that was seized by Panama for illegally carrying surface-to-air missiles and parts for fighter jets.

The Panamanians were tipped off that the decrepit North Korean freighter was smuggling banned munitions, and possibly drugs, concealed by over 200,000 sacks of brown sugar from Cuba. The ship had been previously busted for smuggling narcotics.

The Chong Chon Gang turned out to be carrying an antique Soviet missile control radar system, plus about 240 metric tons of “obsolete defensive weapons.”

The North Korean crew bizarrely decided to fight back when their ship was boarded, initiating a five-day standoff with Panamanian marines, even though their illicit cargo was sneeringly dismissed by American and Panamanian officials as museum-grade junk that dated back to when “Castro was plotting revolutions.”

The Cuban regime diffidently produced a full list of the ship’s military cargo after it was boarded. No one seemed terribly exercised about the situation except the North Korean crew, which was armed only with sticks. The North Korean captain claimed the stress of the standoff caused him to have a heart attack, then tried to commit suicide. The North Korean general who negotiated the arms-for-sugar deal with Cuba was apparently fired after the ship was captured.

U.N. analysts postulated that North Korea was so desperate for food that losing the Chong Chon Gang was a major blow and might also have been worried about the captured ship and crew exposing techniques North Korea uses to smuggle far more dangerous cargoes.

Most of the crew was released from Panamanian custody in January 2014. The captain and two other officers were held until June 2014, when a Panamanian judge dropped the smuggling charges against them, ruling the incident was an international affair over which Panama had no jurisdiction.

The U.N. blacklisted the ship and its operators the following month. North Korea paid a weirdly specific fine of $666,666 to recover the aging ship, which was renamed and is presumed to have gone right back to smuggling, as per North Korea’s usual modus operandi.

Ri told Chosun Ilbo he received a commendation from dictator Kim Jong-un for his efforts. He was also promoted, returning to Pyongyang to take the position of deputy director for Latin American affairs from 2016 to 2019. He returned to Cuba in 2019 to work as a counselor, and eventually planned his escape to South Korea.

“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea. Disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future led me to consider defection,” Ri said.

“In fact, North Koreans yearn for reunification even more than South Koreans,” he continued. “Everyone believes that reunification is the only way for their children to have a better future. Today, the Kim Jong-un regime has brutally extinguished even the slightest hope left among the people.”

Ri provided few details about his escape, which involved flying out of Cuba with his wife and child. He said he made his decision when the North Korean regime refused to let him travel to Mexico for unspecified medical treatment and said defecting was now possible because relatives in North Korea who might face reprisals had all passed away.

“I bought flight tickets and called my wife and kid to tell them about my decision, six hours before the defection. I didn’t say South Korea, but said, let’s live abroad,” he recalled.

Reuters noted on Tuesday that fleeing North Korea has grown much more difficult for most captives of the Communist regime:

Fewer North Korean defectors have been arriving in South Korea in recent years due to strict limits on border crossings into China and hefty broker fees, human rights groups and experts say.

Last year, 196 North Korean defectors came to Seoul, down from as many as 2,700 a decade ago, South Korean government data showed. North Koreans who have recently defected to the South have mostly lived overseas, human rights activists say.

North Korea last year shut some embassies to revamp diplomatic efficiency. The South Korean government has said the closures are a sign that sanctions have made it extremely difficult for North Korean diplomatic missions to earn money for their operating expenses.

Prior to Ri, the highest-ranking North Korean defector of the new century was Thae Yong-ho, former deputy ambassador to Britain. Thae was a major propaganda booster of the Pyongyang regime, working overtime to deflect criticism of North Korea’s appalling human rights record and telling British fans of left-wing despotism that “the future will be of socialism.”

Judging by the last U.K. election results, Thae might have been right about that, but he is no longer in Britain to observe the transformation. In 2016, Thae vanished from the North Korean embassy in west London after growing disillusioned with the regime he served. He soon resurfaced as a South Korean politician who advocated for other defectors. He ran into some ethics trouble in March 2023 and was suspended from South Korea’s governing party.

Thae wrote a Facebook post on Tuesday welcoming Ri to South Korea, and fondly remembering their times as table tennis adversaries at the North Korean foreign ministry.

“I hope that all former North Korean diplomats will join forces and work hard for the unification movement to realize the dream of North Korean officials and people to have their children live freely in South Korea,” Thae wrote.