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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) \u2014 South Korea\u2019s president on Thursday appointed a former North Korean diplomat as a vice minister, the highest-level government job for any of the thousands of North Koreans who have resettled in South Korea.<\/p>\n
Tae Yongho<\/a> was a minister of the North Korean Embassy in London when he defected to South Korea in 2016. Tae is the highest-ranking North Korean who has resettled in South Korea in recent years. He has said he did so because he didn\u2019t want his children to live \u201cmiserable\u201d lives in North Korea and he fell into \u201cdespair\u201d over leader Kim Jong Un\u2019s executions of officials and nuclear ambitions.<\/p>\n North Korea called him \u201chuman scum\u201d and accused him of embezzling government money and committing other crimes.<\/p>\n President Yoon Suk Yeol appointed Tae secretary general the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, which gives the president policy advice on peaceful Korean unification.<\/p>\n The appointment made Tae the first North Korean defector appointed to a vice-ministerial job in South Korea, among about 34,000 North Koreans who have resettled in South Korea, according to Seoul\u2019s Unification Ministry.<\/p>\n In 2020, Tae was elected to South Korea\u2019s parliament<\/a>. There have been other North Korean defectors who have served as lawmakers in South Korea.<\/p>\n Yoon\u2019s office said in a statement that Tae was the right person for the post because he can utilize his living experience in North Korea and work experiences as a member of South Korean\u2019s parliament\u2019s committee on foreign policy and unification issues.<\/p>\n Most of the defectors left North Korea after a devastating famine in the mid-1990s. Upon arrival in South Korea, North Korean defectors are given citizenships, almost-free apartments, resettlement money and other benefits. But coming from authoritarian, impoverished and nominally socialist North Korea, many experience diverse discrimination and severe difficulties in adjusting to new lives in capitalistic, highly competitive South Korea, according to their interviews and surveys.<\/p>\n Yoon promised to provide greater government support to improve the lives of North Korean defectors on the inaugural \u201cNorth Korean Defectors\u2019 Day\u201d on Sunday.<\/p>\n Most of the North Korean defectors are women from the North\u2019s poorer northern regions along the a long, porous border with China. But in recent years, the number of North Korean elites to flee to South Korea has steadily increased, according to the Unification Ministry.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, South Korea\u2019s spy agency said that Ri Il Kyu,<\/a> a counselor of political affairs at the North Korean Embassy in Cuba, had defected to South Korea last November.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n