Kim Jong Un wants Trump back, elite defector tells BBC

 

Donald Trump’s return to the White House would represent “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for North Korea, according to a man uniquely positioned to know.

Ri Il Kyu is the highest-ranking defector to flee North Korea since 2016 and has come face-to-face with Kim Jong Un on seven separate occasions.

The former diplomat, who was working in Cuba when he fled with his family to South Korea last November, admits he was “shaky with nerves” the first time he met Kim Jong Un.

But during each meeting, he found the leader “smiling and in good spirits.”

“He would often praise people and laugh. He seems like a normal person,” Mr Ri told the BBC. But he has no doubt that Mr Kim would do anything to ensure his survival, even if it meant killing all 25 million of his people: “He could have been a wonderful person and father, but turning him into a god made him a monstrous being.”

In his first interview with an international broadcaster, Mr Ri provides rare insight into what one of the world’s most secretive and repressive states hopes to achieve.

He says North Korea continues to view Trump as someone to negotiate with over its nuclear weapons program, despite talks between him and Kim Jong Un failing in 2019.

In the past, Mr. Trump has praised the relationship with Kim as a key achievement of his presidency.

She said the two had “fallen in love” through exchanging letters. Just last month, she told a rally that Mr Kim would like to see him back in office: “I think he misses me, if you want to know the truth.”

North Korea hopes to use the close personal relationship to its advantage, Mr Ri says, contradicting an official statement from Pyongyang last month that it “didn’t care” who became president.

According to Ri, the nuclear-armed state will never get rid of its weapons and will likely seek a deal to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions by the United States.

But he says Pyongyang would not negotiate in good faith. Agreeing to freeze its nuclear program “would be a ruse, a 100 percent deception,” he says, adding that it was therefore a “dangerous approach” that would “only lead to the strengthening of North Korea.”

A “Life or Death Bet”

Eight months after his defection, Ri Il Kyu is living with his family in South Korea.

Accompanied by a police bodyguard and two secret service agents, he explains his decision to abandon the government.

After years of corruption, bribes and lack of freedom, Mr Ri says he was finally tested when his request to travel to Mexico for surgery for a slipped disc in his neck was rejected. “I’ve lived the life of the top 1% in North Korea, but it’s still worse than a middle-class family in the South.”

As a diplomat in Cuba, Mr Ri earned just $500 (£294) a month and so sold Cuban cigars illegally in China to earn enough to support his family.

When he first told his wife of his desire to defect, she was so upset that she ended up in the hospital with heart problems. After that, he kept his plans a secret, sharing them only with her and their son six hours before their plane was due to depart.

He describes it as a “life-or-death gamble.” Ordinary North Koreans caught defecting would typically be tortured for a few months, then released, he says. “But for elites like us, there are only two outcomes: life in a political prison camp or execution by firing squad.”

“The fear and terror were overwhelming. I could accept my death, but I couldn’t bear the thought of my family being dragged to a gulag,” he said. Although Mr. Ri had never believed in God, as he waited nervously at the airport gate in the dead of night, he began to pray.

The last known high-profile defection in the South was that of Tae Yong-ho in 2016. A former deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, he was recently named the new leader of South Korea’s presidential advisory council on unification.

Mr Ri says Mr Kim is aware that the relationship with Russia is temporary.

Turning to North Korea’s recent closer ties with Russia, Mr Ri says the war in Ukraine was a windfall for Pyongyang. The US and South Korea estimate the North sold Moscow millions of shells to support its invasion, in exchange for food, fuel and possibly even military technology.

Mr Ri says the main benefit of this deal for Pyongyang was the ability to continue developing its own nuclear weapons.

With the deal, Russia created a “loophole” in tough international sanctions against North Korea, it says, which allowed it “to freely develop its nuclear weapons and missiles and strengthen its defense, bypassing the need to appeal to the United States for sanctions relief.”

But Mr. Ri says Kim Jong Un understands that this relationship is temporary and that after the war Russia will probably sever relations. For this reason, Mr. Kim has not given up on the U.S., Mr. Ri says.

“North Korea understands that the only way for its survival, the only way to eliminate the threat of invasion and develop its economy, is to normalize relations with the United States.”

While Russia may have given North Korea a temporary reprieve from its economic woes, Mr Ri says North Korea’s complete border closure during the pandemic “has severely devastated the country’s economy and people’s lives.”

When the borders reopened in 2023 and diplomats were preparing to return, Mr Ri says families back home asked them to “bring everything they have, even used toothbrushes, because there is nothing left in North Korea.”

The North Korean leader demands total loyalty from his citizens, and the mere whiff of dissent can lead to prison. But Mr Ri says years of hardship have eroded people’s loyalty, as no one expects anything any more

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The recent changes have largely been driven by an influx of South Korean films, TV series and music, which were smuggled into the North and are illegal to watch and listen to.

“People don’t watch South Korean content because they have capitalist beliefs, they’re just trying to pass the time in their dull, desolate lives,” Mr Ri says, but then they start to wonder: “Why do people in the South live the life of a first-world country while we are impoverished?”

But Mr Ri says that while South Korean content was changing North Korea, it would not cause its collapse, because of the systems of control in place. “Kim Jong Un is very aware that loyalty is waning, that people are evolving, and that is why he is intensifying his reign of terror,” he says.

The government has introduced laws to severely punish those who consume and distribute South Korean content. The BBC spoke to a defector last year who said he witnessed someone being executed after sharing South Korean music and TV shows.
North Korea’s decision late last year to abandon a decades-long policy of reunification with the South was a further attempt to isolate the South’s population, Mr Ri said.

He describes this as Kim Jong Un’s “most evil act” because all North Koreans dream of reunification. He says that while previous North Korean leaders had “stolen people’s freedom, money and human rights, Kim Jong Un has stolen what they had left: hope.”

Outside North Korea, there is much scrutiny of Kim Jong Un’s health, with some believing his untimely death could trigger the regime’s collapse. Earlier this week, South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated that Mr Kim weighed 140kg, putting him at risk of cardiovascular disease.

But Mr Ri believes the system of surveillance and control is too entrenched for Kim’s death to threaten the dictatorship. “Another evil leader will simply take his place,” he says.

It has been widely speculated that Mr Kim is grooming his young daughter, believed to be called Ju Ae, to become his successor, but Mr Ri rejects this idea.

According to him, Ju Ae lacks the legitimacy and popularity needed to become the leader of North Korea, especially since the sacred Paektu lineage, which the Kims use to justify their rule, is believed to be passed down only through the male members of the family.

At first, people were fascinated by Ju Ae, Mr. Ri says, but not anymore. They wonder why she attended missile tests instead of going to school, and wore designer clothes instead of her school uniform, like other children.

Rather than wait for Mr Kim to get sick or die, Mr Ri says the international community must unite, including North Korea’s allies China and Russia, to “persistently persuade it to change”.

“This is the only thing that will bring about the end of the North Korean dictatorship,” he added.

Mr. Ri hopes his defection will inspire his peers, not to defect themselves, but to push for small changes from within. He has no grand ambitions—that North Koreans should be able to vote or travel—just that they should be able to choose their jobs, have enough to eat, and be able to freely share their opinions with friends.

For now, however, her priority is helping her family adjust to their new life in South Korea and integrating her son into society.

At the end of our interview, he offers us a scenario: “Imagine that I offer you a business and tell you that if we succeed, we win big, but if we fail, it means death.

“You wouldn’t agree, would you? Well, that’s the choice I forced on my family, and they silently accepted and followed me,” he says.
“This is now a debt I will have to repay for the rest of my life.” [BBC]

Elite defector tells BBC Kim Jong Un wants Trump back. This article originally appeared on TheConclaveNg.