Seoul, South Korea. When Ri Il Gyu, North Korea’s second diplomat in Cuba, finally decided to flee to South Korea in November, frustrated by his highly repressive and corrupt country, he finished all the necessary preparation work alone. About a week later, he told his family to be ready to leave Cuba together in less than eight hours.
“My wife first told me not to make such a horrible prank. “So I showed her our plane tickets and she was speechless,” Ri said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. “I told my son that there is no future or hope for North Korea.”
His family followed him to Havana airport at dawn the next day, where he took a flight to a third country and then to South Korea, in one of the most high-profile and dramatic defections by North Koreans in recent years.
The defection of Ri, former political advisor to the North’s embassy in Cuba, was not made public until July. He has probably angered the North Korean leader. Kim Jong Un, because it could prompt his other diplomats to do the same in a blow to his control over the country’s elites, observers say. Ri said North Korea’s embassy in Cuba has about 20 diplomats, making it the North’s third-largest overseas mission after China and Russia.
Ri, 52, is the highest-ranking North Korean in default to South Korea from Tae Yongho, former minister at the North Korean embassy in London.arrived in South Korea in 2016.
News of Ri’s defection came as animosity between the two rival Koreas soared to one of the highest points in years, with North Korea flying. balloons to transport garbage towards South Korea and continue its provocative weapons tests. South Korea responded by restarting the front line. Loudspeaker broadcasts of anti-Pyongyang messages and K-pop songsa challenge to Kim’s efforts to limit access to foreign news for its 26 million residents.
“The Kim Jong Un regime will probably be in a very bad mood if they see me speaking publicly in media interviews like this,” Ri said. “They might think it is in their interest to eliminate a person like me. “But I’m not going to worry so much about that, because the South Korean government has prioritized keeping me safe.”
Approximately nine months after his arrival in South Korea, Ri is under a South Korean government protection program. North Korea allegedly has a long history of killing or attempting to kill high-level defectors, estranged relatives of the Kim family living abroad, and senior South Korean officials.
Kim might remember Ri personally, because Ri said he briefly met with Kim many times with other officials in 2018 about preparations to host senior Cuban officials on two occasions. Sometimes Kim asked him questions.
At each meeting, Ri recalled that Kim smoked continuously and was short of breath like “an asthmatic patient,” so she could hear the harsh sound of his breathing. South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Monday that North Korean officials are looking abroad for new drugs to treat Kim’s alleged obesity-related health problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes.
“At the first meeting I clearly shuddered, although it wasn’t that I couldn’t respond. But during the second and third matches I didn’t flinch.”
Ri said he had long thought about fleeing North Korea, which he called “a world of darkness” and “a republic of corruption.” She said that her monthly salary was about $500, so she smuggled Cuban cigars to China through diplomatic bags to make a living. She said North Korean diplomats in other countries had been involved in the deal. ivory smugglingrhino horns, whiskeys and cars.
But he said what decisively triggered his defection was the rejection by North Korea’s Foreign Ministry in early November of his hope to visit Mexico to treat a ruptured disc in his neck. Ri suspected that her boss in Pyongyang was behind that decision because she had previously rejected her boss’s request for a bribe.
“That made me very angry,” Ri said. Without that incident, “I probably would have kept thinking about defecting, but never leaving.”
Ri’s defection came early Cuba established diplomatic relations with South Korea in February. Since there was no South Korean embassy in Cuba at the time, he said he could not get as much support from South Korean diplomats as other North Korean defectors managed to get elsewhere.
South Korean officials were ultimately involved in Ri’s defection. But the Seoul government and Ri declined to provide details about it because that could cause potential diplomatic problems for the countries involved and could help North Korea thwart future escape attempts. from other North Koreans.
At the Havana airport, Ri said he and his family waited for the plane for an hour that felt “like hell.”
He was worried that other North Korean embassy officials might find out he was leaving and come after him. He looked at his wristwatch about a hundred times before he and his family finally boarded the plane safely, he said.
If he had been caught, Ri said he and his family would have faced a future worse than death in a prison camp where people have to eat insects to survive.
Ri is not yet sure what he will do in South Korea, but is encouraged by other North Koreans who have successfully resettled in the South. Tae, the former North Korean minister, was elected to South Korea’s parliament before receiving a vice ministership in July. Ri said that he read Tae’s memoirs about 10 times.
Some 34,000 North Koreans have resettled in South Korea since the late 1990s to escape poverty and political oppression at home — most of them women from the poorest northern provinces. In 2023, about 10 North Koreans considered elite arrived in South Korea, the highest number in recent years, according to the South Korean government.
“I can’t guarantee that my departure will lead to more defections of North Korean diplomats,” Ri said. “But I think my defection will surely give them some courage to do so.”
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