North Korea calls defector 'human scum'
North Korea, in its first response to the defection of a senior diplomat to South Korea, branded the deputy envoy as an embezzler, child rapist and all around "human scum."
The London-based diplomat, Thae Young-Ho, whose job was to burnish the image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, arrived in South Korea this week.
In announcing Thae's defection, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said Wednesday that he was the second-highest North Korean official at the embassy and the most senior North Korean diplomat ever to defect to South Korea.
In 1997, the North Korean ambassador to Egypt fled but resettled in the United States, the Associated Press reported.
The ministry said Thae decided to defect because of his disgust with the Kim Jong-Un regime, his yearning for South Korean democracy and concerns about his children's future, Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, reported.
In its commentary Saturday, the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), without mentioning Thae by name, said the diplomat had recently been called back to Pyongyang because of a long list of transgressions.
"The fugitive was ordered in June to be summoned for embezzling a lot of state funds, selling state secrets and committing child rape," KCNA said.
"This one clearly deserves legal punishment for crimes he has committed but he proved that he is human scum that has no basic loyalty as a human and no conscience and morality by running away to survive and abandoning the homeland and parents and siblings that raised and stood by him," it said.
The commentary also accused Britain of "handing over the fugitives without passports to the South Korean puppets and neglecting its duty to protect diplomats living in its own country."
As a promoter of the image of North Korean leaders, Thae in the past argued the British were brainwashed by their ruling class into believing "shocking, terrifying" lies about North Korea, the BBC reported.
"If the people in this country, or in America, knew that there is a country in the world where there is a free education, free housing, free medical care, then they'd have second thoughts," he noted in one speech in Britain.
More than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, according to the South Korean government, the AP reported.
Many defectors have said they wanted to leave Pyongyang's harsh political system and widespread poverty. North Korea often accuses the South of deceiving or paying its citizens to defect, or claims that they have simply been kidnapped.
In April, 13 North Koreans working at a North Korean-operated restaurant in China defected to South Korea.