Seoul: A high-profile North Korean defector won a constituency seat in the South Korean general elections, becoming the first person hailing from Pyongyang to be chosen directly by South Korean voters as their representative.
Thae Yong-ho, a former No. 2 diplomat at North Korea’s Embassy in London, was elected to the National Assembly as the main conservative opposition United Future Party’s candidate in Seoul’s southern affluent district of Gangnam, Yonhap News Agency reported on Thursday.
Thae received 58.4 per cent of the votes cast on Wednesday in the Gangnam constituency, one of the conservative party’s main strongholds, far ahead of his opponent Kim Sung-gon, a four-term lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Party who earned 39.6 per cent.
“I plan to devote the best of my ability so that our parliament and government can face the reality, and implement sustainable and feasible policies on North Korea,” Yonhap News Agency quoted Thae as saying on Thursday.
Thae, who defected to the South in 2016, had campaigned under a different name, Tae Ku-min.
Thae said he deliberately registered the false name and a false date of birth with the government after defection so as to make it harder for the North to track him down.
This marks the first time a North Korean defector has won a constituency seat in the South’s parliament, though a defector and former professor at Kim Il-sung University previously made his way into Parliament as a proportional representative between 2012 and 2016.
North Korean defectors have begun expanding their scope of participation in South Korean politics, launching the countries’ first-ever political party of defectors last month.
More than 33,000 North Korean defectors live in South Korea.
