The daughter of a North Korean diplomat who is believed to have defected late last year has been forcefully repatriated to her home country where she is being detained by authorities, according to another ex-diplomat defector.
Jo Song Gil, North Korea’s acting ambassador to Rome since October 2017, allegedly went into hiding with his wife last November and is reportedly seeking asylum in the West.
But Jo “could not manage to get his daughter to join them,” Thae Yong Ho, North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to the UK – who defected to South Korea in 2016 – told a press conference on Tuesday, according to local media.
“North Korea took the child back to the country immediately,” Thae told journalists, adding that he has now “confirmed” that she was “repatriated to North Korea and she is under control of the North Korean authorities.”
It is unclear how North Korea repatriated the girl.
Thae had called on Jo last month to join him to South Korea, writing in an open letter published on his blog that “Seoul is the base camp for the unification of the Korean peninsula.”
“As North Korean diplomats, what you and I should do for the rest of our lives is to unify the country and hand over the unified nation to our children’s generation,” he added then.
But on Tuesday, Thae said that “as a person who arrived in South Korea with all my children, I would not be able to continue to demand my colleague Jo Song Gil come to South Korea as he is in such a difficult situation that his daughter is taken back to North Korea.”
Jo, he explained, is now facing “the difficult situation in which he is not able to make his whereabouts known to the public, or make public appearances due to fears over the personal safety of his daughter.”
According to South Korea’s Ministry of Unification at least 32,000 North Koreans have defected since 1998.
Thae also addressed the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his press conference.
The two-day event — starting in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 — is a “trap,” according to Thae.
“There will be no money in the world that will convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons,” he added.