?We have to spray gasoline on North Korea, and let the North Korean people set fire to it.?Thae, 54, has said publicly that dissatisfaction with Kim prompted him to flee his post. Thae has said more North Korean diplomats are waiting in Europe to defect to South Korea. North and South Korea are technically still at war as their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. North Korea?s elite is outwardly expressing its discontent towards Kim Jong-un and his government as more outside information trickles into the isolated nation, the country?s former deputy ambassador to London has said. Thae Yong-ho defected to South Korea in August last year and since December has been speaking to media and appearing on television to discuss his defection and his life as a North Korean envoy.

(North Korean diplomats are required to leave a child in the North, a measure intended to prevent their defection. Their English friends taunted them with questions, like why Mr. Kim had smoked a cigarette inside a nursery. Schooled for several years in Switzerland, Mr. Kim was expected to help modernize his impoverished country. While in London, his sons began asking questions, like why the North Korean government executed people in public without a proper trial, Mr. Thae said. Another sign of Mr. Kim?s weakening control, Mr. Thae said, is evident at the unofficial markets in North Korea where women trade goods, mostly smuggled from China.

PhotoSEOUL, South Korea ? A professor whose book about Japan?s World War II-era military brothels angered Korean women who once worked there was acquitted on Wednesday of defaming the women. In a case closely followed by the South Korean news media, a judge in the Eastern District Court in Seoul ruled that her academic freedom must be protected. She has since faced civil and criminal complaints from nine South Korean women who said they were forced to work at the brothels during the war. She also called Ms. Park a ?pro-Japanese traitor,? according to South Korean news reports. But on Wednesday, Ms. Park won the criminal case.

The defection of Thae , North Korea`s erstwhile deputy ambassador to the U.K., with his wife and children last August was one of the most high-profile cases in recent years. "The traditional structures of the North Korean system are crumbling," Thae Yong Ho said at a press conference in Seoul, according to the New York Times . "Thae called on foreign powers to continue sanctions against North Korea, and argued that the dissemination of outside information would be the best way to spark a rebellion within the North. He also said the elites were becoming disillusioned with Kim Jong Un, and predicted that " more defections of my colleagues will take place, since North Korea is already on a slippery slope. His words come on the heels of a video , released by the country`s state-run television station, depicting the North Korean leader watching a missile test launch.