Relative of Top N. Korean Defected, Seoul Says

A North Korean army officer, identified in news reports as a relative of Pyongyang’s late Defense Minister O Jin U, has defected to the South, Seoul’s internal intelligence agency said Thursday.

A spokesman for the Agency for National Security Planning, or NSP, said Capt. O Yong Nam defected to South Korea recently via an unidentified third country and was being questioned by the agency.

“We do not have any further details about his defection,” the spokesman said.

O is the second Pyongyang military officer, and the 27th North Korean, to defect to the South this year.

State radio said O is a relative of O Jin U, who headed North Korea’s million-strong armed forces.

The late O, who died in February, was the second most powerful person in the North Korean hierarchy after Kim Jong Il, the nation’s unanointed leader. His death was seen by Seoul as a blow to Kim’s position.

The former defense minister was a close friend and confidant of Kim’s father, the late “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung, who died in July, 1994.

On Oct. 12 the NSP announced that North Korean army Col. Choe Ju Hwal arrived in Seoul in late September through an unnamed Southeast Asian nation. Choe once worked as a North Korean military attache in what was then Czechoslovakia and was the highest-ranking North Korean officer to seek asylum in the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.