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Thae Young-ho, a lawmaker with the main opposition People Power Party, asks people at the National Assembly on Oct. 7 not to disclose any information about Jo Song-gil, North Korea’s acting ambassador to Italy who disappeared in November 2018, out of concern for Jo’s family members still in North Korea. (Kang Chang-kwang, staff photographer)

Jo Song-gil, North Korea’s acting ambassador to Italy who vanished from the country in November 2018, reportedly entered South Korea in July 2019. While the South Korean government has not officially acknowledged Jo’s presence in the country, reports to that effect appeared in the press on Oct. 6 and were confirmed by lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties on Oct. 7. Jo’s presence in South Korea was kept secret for more than a year at Jo’s request, given his concerns about family members still in the North. It’s highly inappropriate for his presence in the South to be disclosed unilaterally without his consent.

“I wish the South Korean press would refrain from putting this in the spotlight out of consideration for the feelings of a father who left his daughter behind in North Korea,” said Thae Young-ho, a lawmaker with the main opposition People Power Party, declaring that he wouldn’t ask any questions about Jo during the parliamentary audit that began on Wednesday. Before defecting to South Korea, Thae served as a minister-level official at the North Korean embassy to the UK. The Italian government has said that Jo’s daughter was repatriated to North Korea.

The South Korean government doesn’t appear to be planning to exploit Jo’s defection as a victory in the rivalry between the South and North Korean systems. Politicians and journalists should also approach this affair with caution and sobriety.

Some newspapers have claimed that Jo is the highest-ranking North Korean to defect since Hwang Jang-yop, the former international secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), who came to South Korea in 1997, arguing that this will have serious ramifications for inter-Korean relations. But in light of the facts, such claims are blown out of proportion.

Jo was “acting ambassador,” leading to the assumption that he held the rank of an ambassador. But “acting ambassador” is not a North Korean diplomatic rank but a temporary assignment given to a lower-level official in the absence of the ambassador. From top to bottom, the hierarchy in a North Korean embassy consists of ambassador, minister, councilor, and secretary; Jo’s rank was first secretary. In short, his actual rank was lower than Thae Young-ho, who was a minister.

There is considerable speculation about why the news of Jo’s presence in South Korea would have been leaked at such a sensitive time in inter-Korean relations, following the fatal shooting of a government official from South Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries. This matter should be regarded from the perspective of humanitarian concern, rather than political calculation.

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