Speculation abounds over missing N.Korean diplomat

Speculation is rising over the fate of a North Korean diplomat in Russia who went missing in April.

Officials at the South Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry said nothing Thursday about the diplomat, 51, who disappeared in Beijing in April. He was a third secretary at the North Korean Embassy in Moscow.

The ministry also refused to give out information on his three relatives, who have applied for asylum in South Korea. Seoul fears that media reports on his attempt to defect from the North will adversely affect him at a time when his whereabouts remain unknown.

His relatives said he might have been taken to North Korea and purged there. One possibility is that he might have been caught by North Korean agents while attempting to defect while on a business trip or a plan to overthrow the government in Pyongyang might have been exposed.

“The intent of the missing North Korean diplomat is unknown,” one official said, implying that South Korea has not ruled out the possibility that he disappeared on purpose for unknown reasons.

The diplomat`s relatives applied for asylum in South Korea four months ago, but they have been unable to leave Russia because the latter, a close ally of the North, has refused to issue exit visas for them due to strong opposition from Pyongyang. If this situation continues, it could cause a diplomatic row among the two Koreas and Russia.

In May this year, a South Korean man was caught trying to help a North Korean woman working at a North Korean restaurant in Cambodia to defect. Pyongyang then asked Phnom Penh to harshly punish the man for abduction and human trafficking.

When Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking official to defect from the North to the South, applied for asylum in South Korea in 1997, China spent a month persuading the North before allowing Hwang to leave Beijing for Seoul.

A South Korean official said on the missing diplomat, “This is a politically complicated case.”