A senior North Korean diplomat in Cuba defects with his family to South Korea

North Korean diplomat Ri Il-gyu, 52, made the decision eight months ago to announce to his family that they would go “to live abroad.” His words implied something much more significant than usual: defecting from the most hermetic regime on the planet, North Korea. Until last November, Ri was the political counselor of the North Korean Embassy in Cuba. He fled that country to settle in South Korea, where he now resides, as confirmed by the National Intelligence Service of the latter country. This Tuesday, the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo publishes his testimony exclusively.

“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea. Disillusionment with the regime and a bleak future led me to consider defecting,” Ri said in the interview, given to the South Korean newspaper on July 14 at a hotel in Seoul.

Ri was a key expert on Cuba within the North Korean Foreign Ministry, which he joined in 1999. But his relationship with the island began much earlier. He lived in the Caribbean nation during his teenage years, because his father worked at a trading company associated with the United Front Department of the North Korean Workers’ Party, according to the report. Chosun IlboThat experience would lead him to study Spanish at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Languages.

He worked in Cuba for nine years in two periods, from 2011 to 2016 and from 2019 to 2023. Between both missions, he worked as deputy director of Latin American Affairs at the ministry’s headquarters in Pyongyang. He says that in the foreign ministry he started “from the lowest base” and climbed the ranks “working diligently.”

In 2013, when he served as first secretary at the Cuban Embassy, ​​he successfully negotiated the release of the North Korean ship Chong Chon Gangdetained for seven months in Panama for transporting surface-to-air missiles and fighter jet parts from Cuba. For his work, he received praise from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, with whom he says he has even had tea. “When you sit in front of him, he seems like an ordinary person,” he says.

In his last post, as a political adviser, one of his duties was to prevent Seoul and Havana from reestablishing diplomatic ties. The Latin American country broke relations with South Korea in 1959, after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, and strengthened ties with the also communist North Korea. Pyongyang has for decades pressured its Caribbean ally to stay away from its main enemy, as the two Koreas remain officially at war, after the 1950-1953 conflict ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

Despite the efforts, South Korea and Cuba formalized their relations on February 14, with an exchange of notes between representatives of both countries at the United Nations headquarters in New York, thus sealing what Seoul considers “a crucial turning point.” Although the North maintains its embassy in Cuba, its ambassador returned to Pyongyang in March, according to local media. The North Korean embassy in Havana is the largest that the country maintains in America, and is a nerve center of its diplomatic activity in the region.

In November, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said it would begin restructuring its overseas missions to increase diplomatic effectiveness, a move Seoul saw as an attempt to cut costs for an economy hit hard by sanctions.

Ri is the most senior North Korean diplomat to defect to South Korea since Thae Yong-ho, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, did so with his family in August 2016. He was followed in 2019 by acting ambassador to Italy Jo Song-gil and his counterpart in Kuwait Ryu Hyun-woon, who held the ranks of first secretary and counselor, respectively.

Details about North Korean defections often take months to emerge. South Korean authorities must authorize them, after defectors have completed an education course on South Korean society and the system.

Hopeless

In the interview, Ri says she began to question and become disillusioned with the regime after receiving several unfair evaluations at work, which she says were motivated by her refusal to accept a large bribe. Last year, the foreign ministry also rejected her request to travel to Mexico for medical treatment that she could not get in Cuba, which has been stifled for decades by the US blockade. “At that time, I was furious and convinced that leaving North Korea was the right decision,” she says, admitting that it was helped by the fact that her parents and in-laws have died, leaving her with no family in the country to pay the price.

“I made the decision in mid-July and I did it in early November. I called my wife and children six hours before we left to inform them. I didn’t mention South Korea, I suggested: ‘let’s go live abroad.’” Ri avoids giving details about his escape, so as not to hinder “those who want to follow my path.”

North Koreans who try to defect face severe penalties, including death, according to human rights groups and those who have successfully fled. The number of defectors arriving in South Korea has declined in recent years as border surveillance with China has been stepped up and broker fees have risen, experts say. According to government data, 196 defectors arrived in Seoul in 2023, down from 2,700 a decade ago. However, there was the highest number since 2017 of defectors holding high positions within the system, 10, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Unification.

Despite being part of the country’s elite, and even having received praise from the supreme leader, Ri is blunt: “North Koreans yearn for reunification, even more than South Koreans. They all believe that it is the only way for their children to have a better future. Today, Kim Jong-un’s regime has brutally extinguished even the slightest hope left among the people.”

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