A colonel working for North Korea’s spy agency has fled to South Korea, Seoul revealed on Monday — one of the most significant defections since the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean war.
The colonel, who defected late last year, worked for North Korea’s General Reconnaissance Bureau, its primary espionage agency, the defence and unification ministries told reporters, declining to give further details.
The GRB, headed by hawkish party secretary Kim Yong-chol, is in charge of intelligence-gathering and espionage missions against South Korea. The agency is widely believed to have orchestrated deadly cross-border attacks including the 2010 sinking of a navy ship and artillery shelling of an island, which together killed 50 South Koreans.