North Korea’s ambassador to Italy is missing – it’s a useful reminder about the reality of Kim’s new-look DPRK

Only days after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave his annual New Year’s address, news filtered through that the DPRK ambassador to Italy was missing. According to the latest reports Ambassador Jo Song-gil, the son-in-law of a high-level official in the regime, has been missing since November and is currently in hiding.

News of Jo’s likely defection is embarrassing for the Kim regime, but more importantly it signals to the world that despite North Korea’s recent charm offensive, there is dissent within the country’s inner circles.

Political defections from North Korea are nothing new: 32,147 North Koreans have already resettled in South Korea and a further 1,300 have risked life and limb to apply for asylum in the UK.

However, high-level defections are particularly unusual.

Jo would be the highest-ranking member of the political elite to defect since North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the UK, Thae Yong-ho, defected to South Korea in 2016 after abandoning his post in west London – North Korea’s curiously suburban embassy on Gunnersbury Avenue in Ealing.

Poverty, persecution, or hunger are reasons given by North Koreans who cross illegally into China before making their way to South Korea via Thailand, Laos, or Vietnam. The late 1990s saw mass defections due to a nationwide famine that forced hundreds of thousands of desperate individuals to leave in search of food and work.

But this is 2019. This is the era of the smiling reformer, Kim Jong-un. So why would anyone defect?

North Korea’s young leader worked particularly hard throughout 2018 to shrug off the country’s pariah status: demolishing nuclear test sites; meeting with both South Korean leader Moon Jae-in and US president Donald Trump, and promising to end headline-grabbing nuclear tests.

At home, the young leader is also signalling big changes, promising his people improved living conditions with a strengthened economy.

But despite the pomp and ceremony of 2018, North Korea is not going to denuclearise: Kim is not going to give away the leverage he has in future DPRK-US negotiations and his best guarantee against a US-led invasion.

Standards of living are also unlikely to rise for ordinary North Koreans. Much-touted vanity projects like the Masikryong ski fields and Wonsan’s beach resorts are magnets for Chinese tourist capital, but mean nothing for the majority of the population who will never be allowed near such places.

What has happened since Kim came to power in 2011 is that the Chinese-North Korean border has become further fortified. Electric fences, barbed wire, and guards less susceptible to bribes slow down the number of escapees.

Crackdowns on defections have been coupled with brutal political purges that even saw Kim’s uncle, Jang Song-thaek, on the executioner’s block.

The message is clear: Kim Jong-un does not tolerate dissent. Nor is he interested in the human rights of his people. We certainly should not see him as a social reformer.

Shrewd political tactician? Yes.

Ruthless totalitarian intent on holding onto power? Yes.

And this is what the defection of elite North Koreans such as Ambassador Jo Song-gil tells us. That while 2018 was a year of unprecedented progress for inter-Korean relations, it’s too early to book your train ticket from London to Seoul and on past the DMZ.

And while Kim-Trump summits offer hope for positive change on the Korean Peninsula, verifiable progress on a nuclear-free DPRK is yet to be seen.

North Korea’s absconded ambassador will likely turn up in the coming weeks. If his defection is anything like that of the former deputy ambassador to the UK’s, then the South Korean press will announce Jo’s decision to resettle in Seoul. Like Thae, however, he will struggle to fully enjoy the fruits of his new life, whether in fast-paced, democratic South Korea or elsewhere.

The 2017 murder in Malaysia of Kim Jong-nam, the current leader’s half-brother, was a chilling reminder that even once you leave North Korea, you’re never too important, nor too far away, for Kim’s agents to pay you a visit.

Dr Markus Bell is a lecturer in Korean and Japanese Studies at the University of Sheffield’s School of East Asian Studies