There will be no plaudits from me for Tae Yong-Ho. In 2016, the Park Geun-Hye administration is now publicly known to have weaponized the country's intelligence agencies to encourage high level defections from North Korea for her own political gain. Tae was one of those.

It's not a conspiracy theory there has been enough evidence in the public domain to prove this point, such as the waitress abductions. That is why since Moon came in and the policy geared towards peace you don't see that kind of thing happening anymore. He was a token stunt.

Park's goal during that period was to encourage these defections (which all came within a few of months of each other) and generate a grand narrative that her own pressure policies were pushing the DPRK to the verge of collapse. Again, these events stopped when she was removed.

The foreign policy of South Korea dramatically changes between liberal and conservative administrations. The former pursue peace, inter-Korean diplomacy and engagement, the latter use confrontation, hostility and propaganda. Defectors are a big part of that dynamic.

So really whilst western pundits will praise Tae-Yong Ho's transition from a senior North Korean diplomat to a democratically elected South Korean parliamentary member. I see elements of his story are disingenuous and have to be viewed in the political context they occurred.

Thus ironically he is confined to the existence which South Korean Conservatism effectively given him. He's went from the worst of North Korea, to the worst of South Korea. The wealthy and unscrupulous world of Gangnam could not be more removed from the average, poor NK defector.

Thus if anything, Tae is a huge insult to those of a poor background who risk their lives to migrate to South Korea and then proceed to struggle there in an alien society. He was poached by Park regime for a grandstanding political message, switching one master for another.