The dramatic US operation that overthrew Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro this month may have left North Korean leader Kim Jong-un feeling he was also vulnerable to “decapitation”, according to a former Pyongyang envoy to Havana.
In a wide-ranging interview, Lee Il-kyu, who served as Pyongyang’s political counsellor in Cuba from 2019 until 2023, said Washington’s lightning extraction in Caracas was a worst-case scenario for his former boss.
“Kim must have felt that a so-called decapitation operation is actually possible,” Lee, who now works for a state-backed think tank in Seoul, said.
North Korea’s leadership has long accused Washington of seeking to remove it from power and said its nuclear and missile programmes are needed as a deterrent against alleged regime change efforts by Washington.
But the ex-diplomat, who defected to the South in November 2023, said that Maduro’s capture will now spark panic among North Korea’s security-obsessed leadership.
Kim will “overhaul the entire system regarding his security and countermeasures in case of an attack against him”, he said.
From his perch in Havana, a major backer of Maduro’s socialist government in Caracas, Lee was charged with promoting the interests of the nuclear-armed state in Latin America.
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