Since defecting from his post at the North Korean embassy in London last summer, Thae Yong-ho has become the go-to source for media seeking hard-won insights into his secretive homeland. Thae, the former deputy ambassador to the U. K., has offered a bold prediction: Kim Jong-un’s regime would collapse, and possibly not before long.
In a series of interviews in Seoul, Thae said North Koreans were becoming increasingly aware of the deficiencies of their nominally socialist system as the leadership lost its stranglehold on information — paving the way for an inevitable popular uprising.
Predicting the end of North Korea has a long history marked by countless false dawns. Claims of impending collapse gained prominence after the death in 1994 of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung, the current leader’s grandfather, only for his son, Kim Jong-il, to smoothly take the reins of power.
