Summary: It has been confirmed that a high ranking North Korean Official has defected to South Korea. This has been reported to be the highest ranking official to have defected so far. This official was reportedly a member of the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau, who is in charge of espionage acts against South Korea and other foreign countries. Whenever a North Korean defects, they are interviewed by the South Korean government to try and get any kind of knowledge about North Korea. They suspect that since such a high ranking official has defected, that they will now have lots more information about North Korea. One person who defected said that whenever the elite barely stray from favor, that Kim Jong-Un has them executed. That person also said that because of this, Kim's support base is dwindling and becoming very fragile to the point that he may fall from power in the next three years.
Analysis: I think that if somebody with that much power defected, then it shows that there even is a sense that they are doing something wrong. This is also a great thing for South Korea as now they not only have the information from this guy, they also have a base for more propaganda to defect to South Korea. I've also been thinking about how this guy snuck out of North Korea. Did he somehow sneak out because he's head of espionage? This reminded me immediately of the Revolutionary War. Many people that were a part of the patriots defected to the Americans. There are books that talk all about how British soldiers defected to the side of the Americans and helped them win the war. Hercules Mulligan was a tailor at that time and used his position to talk to British soldiers and get Americans information. As we see here, throughout history, people are seeing that their side isn't correct and switching to the side that they view as correct and help sway the war.
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/11/asia/north-korea-official-defects/index.html
I think that this is a very interesting development in US/North Korean relations because although we do not have custody of this high ranking official, we are very good allies with South Korea and will probably have access to most of the information he divulges. I am interested to see what we find out about North Korea as a result of this. I also think that this defection signifies a decline in North Korea.
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