Seoul, Jan 26 (DPA) A North Korean diplomat defected to South Korea this past autumn by seeking asylum at Seoul’s embassy in Ethiopia, news reports said Tuesday.
The 40-year-old doctor by training had been working at North Korea’s embassy in Addis Ababa, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency and its YTN cable news network reported, citing unnamed sources.

The man, identified only as Kim, appeared at the South Korean embassy in October and spent several weeks there before he flew in November to Seoul, Yonhap said.

North Korea had demanded the diplomat be returned and used several vehicles to erect a barricade in front of Seoul’s embassy in Addis Ababa, it said.

South Korea’s government made no official confirmation of the defection.

Since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, South Korea has taken in more than 16,000 North Korean refugees. Most of them have fled their homeland across its border with China.

There have been few reports of diplomats or other officials in North Korea’s communist government defecting.