The Diplomat Who Came in From the Cold

FEW SOUTH KOREAN POLITICIANS SHOW Thae Yong-ho’s sartorial flair. The recently elected South Korean legislator will regularly appear in a dark fedora hat, a gray suit with a white shirt, tortoiseshell sunglasses—which he keeps on indoors—and a luxury Salvatore Ferragamo or Hermès tie checkered with an African menagerie print of giraffes, zebras, and spotted panthers. Thae dresses with the pride of a man who knows he has arrived. The cosmopolitan politician speaks fluent English and Chinese in addition to his native Korean.

For a regular South Korean official, all this would be unusual enough. For a man raised in one of the most closed dictatorships on Earth, and who spent more than three decades as a senior diplomat for Pyongyang before becoming one of the highest-ranking defectors in 2016, it is extraordinary. In April, he made history as the first North Korean directly elected to South Korea’s legislature—just four years after he fled. And if North Korea ever reconciles with its neighbor—whether through collapse or diplomacy—it may be trailblazers like Thae who play a key role in any rapprochement.

“In half a century, nobody of his caliber has defected,” said Andrei Lankov, the director of Korea Risk