"Kim Jong-un is well aware that loyalty is waning and that is why he is intensifying his reign of terror"

Ri Il-kyu, a former diplomat at the North Korean embassy in Cuba, made the risky decision to defect eight months ago and now lives in South Korea.

Ri, who worked as a political affairs adviser in Havana, is the highest-ranking North Korean official to defect since 2016.

He claims that he maintained Face-to-face meetings with leader Kim Jong-un on up to seven occasions and admits that she “shook with nerves” the first time she met him.

During each meeting, he observed Kim “smiling and in good spirits.”

“He often praised people and laughed. He looks like an ordinary person“Ri tells the BBC.

But he has no doubt that the North Korean leader would do anything to ensure his survival, even if it meant killing his 25 million people: “He could have been a wonderful person and a father, but making him into a god has turned him into a monstrous being,” he says.

In his first interview with an international media outlet, Ri offers a rare glimpse into where one of the world’s most secretive and repressive states is headed.

He says the North Korean regime still sees former US President Trump as someone it can negotiate with over its nuclear weapons programme, even though talks between him and Kim Jong-un broke down in 2019.

He believes that Trump’s return to the White House would be “a once in a thousand years opportunity” for North Korea.

The former president has pointed to the rapprochement with Kim as a key achievement of his presidency.

He went so far as to say that the two “fell in love” by exchanging letters. Last month he told a rally that Kim would like to see him back in office: “I think he misses me“If I tell you the truth,” he said.

North Korea hopes to use this close personal relationship to its advantage, Ri said, contradicting an official statement by Pyongyang last month that it “does not care” who wins next November’s election.

The former diplomat maintains that North Korea will never get rid of its nuclear weapons, although it would probably seek an agreement to freeze its atomic program in exchange for the United States lifting sanctions.

But he says Pyongyang will not negotiate in good faith.

Accept the freezing of its nuclear program”It would be a ruse, a deception “one hundred percent,” he explains, stressing that negotiations on this issue would be a “dangerous approach” that “would only lead to strengthening North Korea.”

Eight months after his defection, Ri Il-kyu lives with his family in South Korea.

Accompanied by a police bodyguard and two intelligence agents, he explains his decision to defect.

Fed up for years with corruption, bribery and lack of freedom, Ri says the final straw came when his request to travel to Mexico for surgery on a herniated disc in his neck was denied.

“I lived the life of the richest 1% in North Korea, but it is still worse than that of a middle-class family in the South“, he says.

As a diplomat in Cuba, Ri earned barely US$500 per month and sold Cuban cigars illegally in China to maintain his family’s standard of living.

When he first confessed his desire to defect to his wife, she was so distraught that she ended up in the hospital with heart problems.

After that, he kept his plans secret, only sharing them with her and her son six hours before his plane was scheduled to depart.

He describes it as a “bet on life or death“Ordinary North Koreans caught trying to defect are typically tortured for a few months and then released, he says.

“But for elites like us, there are only two outcomes: life in a political prison camp or being executed by firing squad,” he says.

And he adds that “the fear was overwhelming.”

“I could accept my own death, but I couldn’t bear it the idea of ​​my family being dragged into a gulag“, says.

Although Ri had never believed in God, during her nervous wait at the airport gate in the middle of the night she began to pray.

The last reported defection to South Korea from a senior official had been that of Tae Yong-ho in 2016.

A former minister counselor at North Korea’s embassy in the United Kingdom, Tae was recently named the new leader of the presidential advisory council on South Korean unification.

Regarding the recent warming of relations between North Korea and Russia, Ri believes that The war in Ukraine was a stroke of luck for Pyongyang.

The United States and South Korea estimate that North Korea has sold Moscow millions of rounds of munitions to aid its invasion of the neighboring country in exchange for food, fuel and possibly military technology.

Ri believes the main benefit of the deal for Pyongyang is the ability to continue developing its nuclear weapons.

With the deal, Russia created a “loophole” in the strict international sanctions against North Korea, it said, allowing it to “freely develop its nuclear weapons and missiles and strengthen its defenses, while avoiding the need to appeal to the United States for sanctions relief.”

However, Ri believes that for Kim Jong-un This relationship is temporary And after the war, Russia is likely to break off relations, which is why the North Korean leader does not consider negotiations with the United States impossible.

“North Korea understands that the only way to survive, the only way to eliminate the threat of invasion and develop its economy, is to normalize relations with the United States.”

Ri believes that the complete closure of borders during the pandemic “severely devastated the country’s economy and people’s lives,” although Russia may have provided North Korea with temporary economic relief.

When borders reopened in 2023 and diplomats prepared to return, Ri recalls their families asking them to “bring everything they had, even their used toothbrushes, because there was nothing left in North Korea”.

The North Korean leader demands total loyalty from his citizens and the mere hint of dissent can result in prison.

But Ri says years of hardship have eroded people’s loyalty, with no one now expecting anything from their “supreme leader” Kim Jong-un.

“There is no longer genuine loyalty to the regime or to Kim Jong-un, It is a forced loyaltywhere one must be loyal or face death,” he says.

The recent shift has been largely driven by an influx of South Korean films, TV shows and music being smuggled into the North, where it is illegal to watch and listen to them.

“People don’t watch South Korean content because they have capitalist beliefs, they are just trying to kill time in their monotonous and gloomy lives,” Ri says, then asks, “Why South Koreans live the life of a first world country while we are impoverished?”

But Ri believes that although South Korean content is changing North Korea, will not cause its collapse due to control systems.

“Kim Jong-un is very aware that loyalty is waning, that people are evolving, and that is why he is intensifying his reign of terror,” he said.

The government has introduced laws to harshly punish those who consume and distribute South Korean content. The BBC spoke to one defector last year who said he witnessed someone being executed for sharing South Korean music and TV shows.

North Korea’s decision late last year to abandon its policy after decades to eventually reunite with the Southwas another attempt to isolate citizens from the neighboring country.

Ri describes this as Kim Jong-un’s “most evil act”because all North Koreans dream of reunification.

He argues that while previous North Korean leaders had “stolen people’s freedom, money and human rights, Kim Jong-un has stolen what they had left: hope.”

Outside North Korea, much attention is being paid to Kim Jong-un’s health, with some believing that his premature death could lead to the collapse of the regime. Earlier this week, South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated that Kim weighed 140kg, putting him at risk of cardiovascular disease.

But Ri believes that the surveillance and control system is too well established so that Kim’s death could threaten the dictatorship.

“Another evil leader will simply take his place,” he predicts.

It has been widely speculated that Kim is preparing her young daughter, whose name is believed to be Ju-aeto be her successor, but Ri dismisses that idea.

According to Ri, Ju-ae lacks the legitimacy and popularity needed to become North Korea’s leader, especially since the sacred Paektu bloodline, which the Kims use to justify their rule, is believed to be passed down only through the family’s men.

At first, people were fascinated by Ju-ae, Ri says, but not anymore. They wonder why he attended missile tests instead of going to school, and why he wore high-end designer clothes instead of his school uniform like other children.

Instead of waiting for Kim to get sick or die, Ri says that The international community must uniteincluding North Korean allies China and Russia, to “persistently persuade it to change.”

“This is the only thing that would bring about the end of the North Korean dictatorship,” he added.

Ri hopes his defection will inspire his fellow students not to defect themselves but to push for small changes from within. He has no grand ambitions, such as allowing North Koreans to vote for their leaders or travel, but simply that they should be able to choose what they do for work, have enough to eat and be able to share their opinions freely with friends.

For now, however, her priorities are helping her family adjust to their new life in South Korea and helping her son integrate into society.

At the end of our interview, he poses a scenario: “Imagine that I offer you an adventure and tell you that if we succeed, We will win big, but if we fail, it means death.

“You wouldn’t agree, would you? Well, that It is the choice I imposed on my familyand they silently accepted and followed me,” he says.

“Now it is a debt that I must pay for the rest of my life.”

Additional reporting by Jake Kwon and Hosu Lee.

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