Both Seoul and Pyongyang have embassies or consulates in all five locations.
North Korea has diplomatic ties with more than 150 countries, according to Seoul, but the number of missions it maintains overseas has shrunk since the 1990s due to financial constraints.
According to Seoul’s unification ministry, 196 North Korean defectors arrived in the South last year, with around 10 of them being from Pyongyang’s elite class, such as diplomats and possibly their children.
This marked the highest number of defections by North Korean elites to the South since 2017, according to Seoul.
“The end of the pandemic has enabled North Korean agents, previously confined within their country, to travel abroad for missions, while South Koreans are also travelling abroad without any restrictions,” Lee Man-jong, president of the Korean Association for Terrorism Studies, told AFP.
“Pyongyang appears to be targeting South Korean assets and nationals located in foreign countries with which they have established strong diplomatic ties.”
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
Experts say the extended overseas stay during the pandemic has led North Korean expatriates to increasingly doubt their country’s isolated regime.
“While living abroad, these North Koreans were able to send their children to normal schools, avoiding propaganda education and the constant need to be obedient to the regime,” Ahn Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher who runs the World Institute for North Korea Studies, told AFP.
“If North Korean diplomats and agents stationed abroad are continually and brutally pressured by Pyongyang to address defections by elite expats, we cannot rule out the possibility of the North plotting a terrorist attack … against South Koreans living overseas.”
