Senior North Korea Military Intelligence Officer Reportedly Defects To South Korea [Updated]

Following sharply on the heel of reports that North Korea has successfully tested an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) that could threaten the United States, as previously reported by the Inquisitr, a report from ABC News is now indicating that a senior military intelligence officer from North Korea has defected to the South.

While reports occasionally surface of soldiers defecting, this would potentially be the first time that a senior military officer has done so, and while the highest-profile defection ever was that of Hwang Jang-yop, a senior ruling Workers’ Party official who once tutored Kim’s late dictator father Kim Jong Il, he was never a part of the military apparatus, and certainly not of North Korea’s military intelligence complex. Hwang Jang-yop defected almost 20 years ago, in 1997, and died in 2010.
Over 29,000 North Koreans have reportedly defected since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Many have testified that they wanted to escape poverty and the North’s facist system, one which tends toward corporal punishment and punishment of family members for even minor crimes – especially political dissent.

According to the report, Seoul’s Defense Ministry and Unification Ministry (a government department dedicated to peacefully reuniting the two countries) of South Korea indicated that a North Korean colonel from the DPRK’s General Reconnaissance Bureau defected to South Korea sometime last year.

No further details were provided, but the General Reconnaissance Bureau is believed to be behind two attacks blamed on Pyongyang that killed 50 South Koreans in 2010, and is also responsible for North Korea’s cyberwarfare program (Bureau 121) and other clandestine operations against foreign powers, particularly South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Its agents are reportedly scattered around the world, and their families at home are given special treatment; access to a highly-placed officer would be a significant coup for both South Korea and their American allies.

Seoul also reported three days prior that 13 North Koreans working in the same restaurant in a “foreign country” (which has since turned out to be the east China city of Ningbo) had defected to the South, although they did not elaborate on whether these were soldiers or citizens. It is, however, the largest group defection from North to South Korea since Kim Jong Un rose to power in 2011.

Defections are a regular source of contention between the North and the South; North Korea typically accuses the South of enticing their citizens to defect, something which the South denies. But whether enticed or not, the defection of a military intelligence colonel is a significant black-eye for North Korea, and a valuable resource for the South.

This story is still developing and the Inquisitr will continue to update as more details become available.

[Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images]