Kum Thae was a typical teenager. He went to a school in Acton, west London, used Facebook and WhatsApp, and enjoyed basketball. But after taking his A-levels (double maths, computer science) this summer something odd happened. He vanished.
“We tried his phone. It was blocked. He disappeared from Facebook and social media. We were very worried,” said his friend Louis Prior, 19.
The mystery was solved this week when it emerged that Kum’s father, Thae Yong-ho, a high-ranking diplomat and minister at the North Korean embassy in London, had defected. He had slipped out from the embassy’s suburban semi-detached house in Ealing, taking his family with him. |