[Yonhap News Photo]
A top North Korean manager of state funds in Europe has vanished in an apparent attempt to defect with a huge amount of foreign currencies in his hands, triggering an international spy war, a South Korean newspaper reported Friday.
Dong-A Ilbo, a Seoul-based daily, said the official in charge of money management for the No. 39 office of the Workers' Party, which runs money for the regime, disappeared with his two sons in June from an unidentified European country.
The report has not been verified, and there have been no words from any South Korean officials.
The North Korean fund manager has been under protection by local authorities after he made away with foreign currencies worth about 400 billion won ($362 million), the newspaper said, citing vague sources in Europe.
Yonhap News agency also carried a similar report that a North Korean fund manager in Europe has been on the run since late 2015 with a state fund estimated at several billion won (several million dollars). He has been staying in a European country after Washington rejected his request for defection, it said.
Pyongyang has dispatched a team of special agents to block the fund manager's defection with the help of all North Korean diplomatic missions in Europe while South Korea and Western countries have jumped into the race to grab him, Dong-A said.
The newspaper speculated the defection of Thae Yong-ho, a minister at North Korea's embassy in London, appeared to have been related to the flight of the fund manager who apparently knows well about the flow of secret money controlled by North Korea's ruling family.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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