In a photo taken on October 5, 2020, visitors look at a painting of late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung at an exhibition of ‘national art treasures’ celebrating the 75th founding anniversary of the Worker’s Party of Korea at the Okryu Exhibition Hall in Pyongyang. (Photo by KIM Won Jin / AFP)
SEOUL — North Korea’s former senior diplomat to Italy, who disappeared in late 2018, came to South Korea in July last year and has lived here ever since, a lawmaker revealed Tuesday.
“Former (acting) Ambassador Jo Song-gil was found to have entered South Korea in July last year and is under the protection of (government) authorities,” Rep. Ha Tae-keung of the main opposition People Power Party, who is a member of the parliament’s intelligence committee, wrote on Facebook.
Ha’s remark came hours after South Korean broadcaster JTBC reported that Jo, who was rumored to have been seeking asylum in a third country, had defected to the South along with his wife, citing intelligence sources. Other news outlets followed up with similar reports, citing multiple sources.
If this information is confirmed, Jo would be one of the highest-ranking officials from Pyongyang to settle here, after the late Hwang Jang-yop, former secretary of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, who defected to the South in 1997.
The National Intelligence Service and Unification Ministry, however, said they could not confirm the report.
South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha also said she could not confirm Jo’s defection to Seoul during a parliamentary audit Wednesday, but added the ministry had played its respective role in the process.
On Nov. 10, 2018, while serving in Rome as the North’s acting ambassador, Jo disappeared without notice together with his wife days before his term was to expire and he was scheduled to return to Pyongyang. When Jo fled, he left his daughter in Rome, who was later repatriated to the North, according to the Italian Foreign Ministry.
Since then, his whereabouts had been unknown, until media outlets reported in January 2019 that he was seeking asylum in a Western country and was under protection of Italian authorities.
In August 2019, the spy agency here said that Jo was being protected “somewhere” outside of Italy, without revealing where, at a time when he is presumed to have already arrived in the South.
The South appears to have kept mum on the defection, considering the safety of Jo’s daughter who is believed to be in Pyongyang, and on the risk of hurting diplomatic efforts between Seoul, Washington and Pyongyang.
Rep. Thae Yong-ho of the main opposition party, who is another senior diplomat who defected here, issued a statement Wednesday, raising concern that the revelation of Jo’s defection could further jeopardize his daughter’s safety in the North. Thae served as the North’s deputy ambassador to Britain before defecting to the South in 2016 with his family.
Saying Jo’s daughter was forcibly whisked back to the North, she, along with other remaining family members in the North, could face a harsh punishment in the country if it was revealed that the diplomat defected to the South, noting the regime considers such a defector as a “turncoat” and “traitor.”
The North is extremely sensitive about defections, especially among diplomats and its elite classes, fearing it could undermine the reclusive regime, as well as on the possibility of leaking sensitive state information to the US and South Korea.
It remains unclear why Jo decided to flee Rome and settle in the South. He served as the North’s acting ambassador to Rome after Italy expelled then-Ambassador Mun Jong-nam in October 2017 following the North’s sixth nuclear test in September that year.
Jo is believed to be among an elite class in the North, with both his father and father in-law having been ambassadors.