Oct. 8, 2024, 5:52 p.m.
Tae Yong-ho is pointing to a map of a unified Korea and smiling with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy. The 62-year-old North Korean defector is today a key player in the South Korean government’s plans for uniting the peninsula that was split in two by a bloody war in the 1950s.
Tae is one of around 34,000 North Korean defectors currently living in South Korea. In July, the former North Korean diplomat obtained the highest-ranking government position of any North Korean defector in South Korea when the government in Seoul named him vice minister. He is now secretary-general of the Secretariat of the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, a consultative body that advises the South Korean president on one of the country’s central constitutional issues: the eventual reunification of North and South Korea.
As older generations of Koreans who remember the war grow old and die, the idea of reunification is losing its grip on the popular imagination. Meanwhile, tensions between the two Koreas are at an all-time high. The idea of somehow unifying two countries with vastly divergent economies and political systems appears to many just a pipe dream, especially at a time when citizens of the two Koreas have almost no opportunities to meet. But the government in Seoul is clinging to reunification as a matter of policy and principle, and people such as Tae serve as a living bridge between the two societies.
Tae was a North Korean diplomat for over 30 years, serving in the country's embassy in Denmark and twice in London. Before experiencing life in European capitals, he says, he was a loyal believer in the North Korean political system and its communist ideology. He truly believed that only communism could provide his people with a good welfare system and social support. But when he arrived in Denmark for the first time in 1996, he says, he was “shocked and surprised that the capitalist welfare system was much, much better than the socialist welfare system.” He was intrigued and began studying more about capitalist economies.
Nevertheless, that newfound knowledge wasn’t enough to drive him away from North Korea. Tae knew that if he defected, his family members, including his extended family, would all be punished. It wasn’t until his two sons grew older and began asking questions about their future that his decision to remain loyal to the North Korean regime began to waver.
“As parents, we should give freedom to our children. That is my last wish and my legacy, to cut the chain of slavery for my two sons,” Tae told reporters in Seoul recently, speaking in an English tinted with the British accent common among internationally educated diplomats.
His eventual decision to defect in 2016 came from a mixture of luck and familial pressures. Tae’s wife attended the same language school in Pyongyang for North Korean elites that he did, making her one of the only spouses in the North Korean embassy in London who could speak English. While the couple was living in the United Kingdom, he says, she began to watch British television programs. They gave her a glimpse of a different lifestyle.
“She learned what the basic rights of human beings are. In North Korea, they never teach those basic rights,” Tae said. “So she started to advocate for her own rights within the family.”
It was her newfound assertiveness that eventually led Tae to defect. He and his wife had long discussions about the implications of their decision. Tae says he was worried about what would happen to their relatives and friends back home. His wife was less circumspect.
“She said, ‘No matter what happens to other people, I don’t care. I only care about the future of my sons because I am their mother, so I have the right to decide the future of my sons,’” Tae said.
The North Korean regime usually requires at least one of the children of all diplomats to remain home while their parents serve abroad, precisely to deter defections. Tae, his wife, and his youngest son were in London together, but they needed to get their eldest son out before they could escape to South Korea.
Tae’s eldest son was a university student in Pyongyang at the time. It was a tense moment between North Korea and the international community. The United Nations had enforced strict sanctions against Kim Jong-un’s regime due to its rapidly developing nuclear program. International universities stopped accepting North Korean students.
Still, the Swiss-educated Kim was anxious to send more North Korean students to Europe. The only way for North Koreans to obtain student visas at the time was if their relatives were somehow abroad already. That meant the children of North Korean diplomats were some of the only people in the country who could apply to study abroad. Tae’s eldest son was in the perfect position to obtain a student visa. He flew to London after passing entrance exams and being accepted into a university program.
“It was a kind of miracle,” said Tae, who says his family would never have defected if they had to leave their son behind. “When my oldest son arrived at Heathrow Airport and my wife saw our son coming toward her, she grabbed my hand and said, ‘This is a miracle. We have to use this opportunity.’”
As a diplomat in London, Tae frequently encountered South Korean diplomats at receptions and events around town. He took the opportunity to communicate to them that he wanted to leave for South Korea. Once he had made the decision to defect, he had to leave London as quickly as possible to prevent the North Korean regime from taking a British diplomat in Pyongyang hostage in an effort to get him back. He and his wife and two sons landed in South Korea roughly eight years ago.
“I had to make a very quick move to leave London so the British could tell the North Korean regime that my family and I weren’t in London anymore,” he said.
Tae knows that all of his extended family has since been expelled from Pyongyang as a result of his actions, including his mother-in-law and his siblings. He was told that they are still alive in some of North Korea’s most remote regions, but he’s unable to have any contact with them.
Sometimes he can speak secretly with North Korean friends who are still serving as diplomats in embassies around the world, but they know they would face severe consequences if they were caught talking to him. He is persona non grata for the North Korean regime, and he has body guards protecting him 24 hours a day. Tae admits that he misses his friends and family back home, especially during the holidays.
“When I see the well-being of my sons, I feel very happy. But sometimes, if I think about my family members in North Korea, I feel very guilty about what I have done,” he acknowledged.
Both of Tae’s sons have now graduated from university in South Korea. One of them plans to enlist in the South Korean army, even though North Korean defectors are exempt from South Korea’s strict mandatory military service.
Tae, meanwhile, has thrown himself into his work as an advocate for reunifying Korea. He says that many in the North Korean elite are afraid they will be purged or persecuted if Korea is reunified. His job is to explain to them that they will be treated fairly.
“My role in this post is to deliver the message to North Korean leadership and the people that if Korea is reunified there will be no illegal purge,” he said. “This is a democratic system. Everything will be done in a legal way. I want to be a good example and tell them how democracy works. North Korean citizens would enjoy the same rights, the same privileges as South Korean citizens if Korea is reunified.”
