North Korean diplomat defects to South Korea from Cuba: Report

A high-ranking North Korean diplomat stationed in Cuba defected to South Korea last November — just months before Seoul and Havana established diplomatic ties, a report said Tuesday.

North Korean diplomat Ri Il Kyu had been responsible for political affairs at Pyongyang’s embassy in Cuba since 2019, tasked specifically “with obstructing the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Cuba”, the Chosun Daily reported.

Ri defected to South Korea with his wife and children in early November, the report said, making him the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat known to have defected since Thae Yong Ho, Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to Britain, in 2016.

South Korea’s unification ministry and foreign ministry both told AFP they were unable to confirm the defection.

Seoul’s unification ministry has previously flagged a rising number of defections by North Korean elites, which they said made up around 10 of the 196 defections in 2023, the highest in years.

Around three months after Ri’s reported defection, Seoul and Havana — which is one of Pyongyang’s oldest allies, and a fellow communist state — announced they were establishing diplomatic ties.

In an exclusive interview with South Korea’s Chosun Daily, Ri said he decided to defect after Pyongyang rejected his request to seek medical treatment in Mexico after an injury, even though he could not receive the necessary treatment in Cuba due to a lack of specialist equipment.

He also claimed to have received unfair performance reviews after rejecting a demand from a senior foreign ministry official in the North for bribes when he visited Pyongyang in August 2019 to discuss a project to open a North Korean restaurant in Cuba.

“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea,” he told the Chosun Daily.

“Disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future led me to consider defection.”

Ri also told the newspaper that North Korea’s former foreign minister Ri Yong Ho and his family had been sent to a political prisoner camp in December 2019 on “suspicion of corruption”, over a bribery case involving the embassy in Beijing.

South Korea’s spy agency said in May that Pyongyang was plotting “terrorist” attacks targeting Seoul’s officials and citizens overseas, with the foreign ministry raising the alert level for diplomatic missions in five countries.

The agency said it appeared to be a response by Pyongyang to a wave of defections by elite North Koreans who were trapped overseas during the pandemic and were seeking to avoid returning home after border controls were eased.

North Korean embassy officials may be submitting false reports blaming “external” factors — such as South Koreans based overseas — for defections by their colleagues in a bid to evade punishment, Seoul’s spy agency said at the time.