North Korea Kim Jong un's Rocket Toy

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wtZPFi4g-E]North Korea Kim Jong un's Rocket Toy - YouTube[/ame]

 

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The sooner, the better...

People will rise against N Korean regime, says defector
Wed, 25 Jan 2017 - A high-profile N Korean defector also says Kim Jong-un would be prepared to attack LA with nuclear weapons.

In August last year, Thae Yong-ho became one of the highest-ranking officials ever to defect from North Korea. In a wide-ranging interview in Seoul, he tells the BBC's Stephen Evans he believes leader Kim Jong-un would be prepared to attack the US with nuclear weapons, but that the regime will one day fall. There are moments when the usually fluent English of the North Korean defector halts. His voice quivers and he pauses. His eyes grow moist. These moments of silent emotion come when Thae Yong-ho thinks about his brother back in North Korea.

He told the BBC that he was sure that his family have been punished for his defection. This realisation both grieves him and steels him against the regime. "I'm sure that my relatives and my brothers and sisters are either sent to remote, closed areas or to prison camps, and that really breaks my heart," he said. If he could imagine his brother shouting to him in anguish from prison in North Korea, what would he reply? "That is really a question I don't like to even think about. That is why I am very determined to do everything possible to pull down the regime to save not only my family members but also the whole North Korean people from slavery."

It was his closer family in London who persuaded Thae Yong-ho to defect. He found himself defending the regime to his children, particularly his younger son who was a bright kid in a West London state school. The lad grew long hair and wondered how he would be treated back in North Korea. Why, the teenager asked, were North Koreans barred from the internet? Mr Thae said that in the privacy of their home, they started being honest about the regime, because "you can't lie to your family". He started leading a double life, addressing far-left groups in Britain about the virtues of socialism while denouncing it at home - and all the time having to tell his sons that they mustn't breathe a word.

He increasingly asked those he met from the West about life in Seoul. North Korean diplomats travel in twos so each keeps an eye on the other. So his questions about the West were often while his (presumably) unsuspecting comrade was taking a break with a visit to the toilet at their favourite West London curry house. Then, eight months ago, Mr Thae and his family vanished from the embassy where they lived, only to turn up in Seoul. He won't say how that journey was made, whether the secret services of Britain or the United States or South Korea were involved. But he did expand on the process whereby he changed his mind. The son who prompted the change had won a place in Imperial College in London. But he will now study in South Korea - life as an obviously Korean student in London would have been too dangerous, exposing him to the risk of abduction by North Korean agents.

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