During a rare appearance before Congress Wednesday, a high-ranking North Korean defector told lawmakers that the U.S. should focus on shaping the flow of information into North Korea and urging China not to repatriate defectors.
The testimony by Thae Yong-ho, a former diplomat working in the the U.K. who defected to South Korea in 2016, comes as President Donald Trump readies to visit Asia for 12 days. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jon-un have exchanged heated words in recent months, as Pyongyang has stepped up its missile tests. Trump has dubbed Kim “Little Rocket Man” and during a speech at the United Nations threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if the U.S. is forced to defend itself or its allies.
Thae, whom North Korea has described as “human scum,” told House lawmakers he grew up more privileged than other North Koreans—he received an elite education in China and was later allowed to live and work abroad. But he still felt like he was living a life of a “modern day slave,” and didn’t want his sons to grow up the same.
“I feared that someday my sons would have cursed me for forcing them back to North Korea,” he said.
Thae noted that North Korea’s “free markets are flourishing” and that citizens have found ways to access information from the outside, such as South Korean films and television. He predicted a citizen uprising fueled by dissatisfaction and knowledge of the outside world if the regime does not change—something he said the U.S. government should focus on.
“We cannot change the policy of terror of the Kim Jong-un regime, but we can educate the North Korean population to stand up by disseminating outside information,” he said. “We should make tailor-made contents which can educate the North Korean population.”
He suggested first disrupting the deification of Kim Jong-un by disseminating information about him and forcing North Koreans to question the circumstances of his birth. Kim was a “hidden boy,” the third son of Kim Jong-il who was “kept secretly and silently in Switzerland.”
“But the majority of the North Korean population do not know this fact,” he said. Thae later added that young North Koreans use portable SD memory cards to carry information, known as “nose cards,” that are compact enough to place in their nostrils if they are searched.
Thae also suggested expanding targeted economic sanctions and strengthening the U.S.-South Korea alliance. He urged the U.S. to exhaust all “soft power” options before taking a military route—warning that North Korea is ready to retaliate in response to a pre-emptive strike.
“There are tens of thousands of North Korean artilleries and short range missiles ready to fire at any moment, along the military demarcation line,” he said. “North Korean officers are trained to press the button without any further instructions from the general command if something happens on their side.”
State and Defense Department officials have said that “peaceful pressure” on North Korea is preferable.
“Do we have military options in defense for attack, if our allies are attacked? Of course we do. But everyone is out for a peaceful resolution,” Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said during a visit to South Korea in October. “Our goal is not war.”
Some have looked to China, North Korea’s chief trading partner, as a way to pressure Pyongyang. Trump is expected to urge China to implement U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea during his trip to the region.
Thae said the U.S. should continue pressuring China to support sanctions against Pyongyang, but should also urge China not to send defectors back to North Korea. If China were to open its borders and allow defectors to pass through to South Korea, he said, the North Korean system “would collapse in a very short span of time.”
