North Korean exile Thae Yong-ho wins a seat in Seoul's Parliament

In absolute first, a dissident from the North wins a majority seat in South Korea. A candidate for the conservative front, Thae is critical of the South Korean president's openings to Pyongyang. Moon Jae-in, however, wins: thanks to successful handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Seoul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Former North Korean high diplomat Thae Yong-ho was elected to the South Korean parliament yesterday. It is the first time that a dissident from the North has won a majority seat in South Korea.

Thae, who was Pyongyang's deputy ambassador to Britain, ran for the Conservative Party of Freedom, the main opposition force to President Moon Jae-in and his Liberal Democratic Party.

He won with 58.4% of the votes in Gangnam borough, a wealthy district of Seoul where conservatives traditionally hold sway. He wants to work on unification between the two Koreas, divided along the 38th parallel since the end of the Second World War.

In a testimony to the South Korean Parliament, Thae said that the North Korean people live in slavery. He is also convinced that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will never give up his nuclear arsenal.

The exile joined the conservative front because in his opinion Moon's policy of détente towards Pyongyang is unrealistic. The South Korean president has tried to carve out a mediator role between the United States and North Korea, a dialoguing line that partly follows the "Sunshine Policy" of his liberal predecessors.

Thae, who fled with his family to South Korea in 2016, is accused by the North Korean regime of revealing state secrets, stealing money from his country's government and rape of minors.

In South Korea there are 33 thousand North Korean refugees. The first to gain a parliamentary seat in the South was Cho Myung-chul in 2012, always elected to the ranks of the Conservative Party, but on a proportional list.

Another North Korean exile, Ji Seong-ho, will keep Thae company among the parliamentary chairs of the South. Ji has been elected on a proportional list of the Future Korea Party, a satellite formation of the Conservative Party.

The South Korean elections were held in the midst of the fight against the coronavirus. Moon's Liberal Democratic Party gained an overwhelming victory. Together with the allies of the Platform Party, the Liberal Democrats won 180 seats out of the 300 in the National Assembly. The conservative front stopped at 103 seats.

The election result is seen as a clear popular support for the government management of the pandemic crisis: Seoul’s model of intervention is being studied in the rest of the world and an alternative to the draconian one adopted by China. Despite the epidemic, 29 million South Koreans cast their vote, 66.2% of the electorate.