ABSTRACT
In the summer of 2016 I moved to South Korea with my wife and two sons. I am one of the few highly ranked officials ever to defect from North Korea since the 1997 defection of Hwang Jang-Yop, the brains behind North Korea’s governing ideology “Juche” which combines Marxism with extreme nationalism. As North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to London, I was the servant of a brutal regime and of its merciless leader, and my job was to spread North Korean propaganda and report back on colleagues. We keep an eye on each other, control each other, and even spy on each other. During my speeches in London, I needed to be very convincing and be a true believer myself. If I showed any sign of hesitation, I would be sent to prison camps, and my whole family’s life would be jeopardized. North Korean diplomats and their families who are dispatched to foreign countries live together as one group. It is like a microcosm of North Korean society. An ambassador takes home an average monthly salary of $900–1,100 although the amount varies depending on the country. A minister gets about $700–800. Many people question how one could live in London with a salary of less than $1,000, but that is because all the North Korean diplomats based overseas make extra income using all possible means. Diplomats working in the commercial section of North Korean Embassies are also required to earn foreign currency and send it to the regime, a compulsory task designed to make up for North Korea’s dwindling foreign exchange income due to sanctions, which is crucial to its development of nuclear weapons.
