A colonel from North Korea's military spy agency fled to South Korea last year in a rare senior-level defection, Seoul officials said Monday.... (Associated Press) 
 
 A man watches a TV news program showing file footage of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, April 11, 2016. A colonel from North Korea's military spy... (Associated Press) 
 
 SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A colonel from North Korea's military spy agency fled to South Korea last year in an unusual case of a senior-level defection, Seoul officials said Monday. News of the defections followed a South Korean announcement on Friday that 13 workers at a restaurant run by the North in an unidentified country had defected, a case it described as unprecedented, arriving in the South a day earlier. “What needs to be stressed is that these people had valid identity documents and legally came to the country, not North Koreans who have entered illegally.” 
 
 South Korea’s Joongang Ilbo newspaper said the 13 worked at a restaurant in the Chinese city of Ningbo until around Tuesday last week when they disappeared, quoting a Chinese worker at the Ryugyong Korean Restaurant. The main liberal opposition Minjoo Party on Monday accused the government of conservative President Park Geun-hye of trying to influence conservative voter turnout ahead of Wednesday’s parliamentary elections by announcing the defection of the restaurant workers last week. Both ministries denied suggestions that Monday’s revelations were made for domestic political reasons and said disclosing the defections was in the public interest. The defector was a senior colonel with the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau, which is in charge of espionage operations against South Korea, according to South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun and Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee. South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles North Korea issues, also said that a senior diplomat who was posted in an African country had defected to the South last year with his family. Its head, General Kim Yong Chol, is accused by the South of being behind a 2010 torpedo attack against the South that sunk a navy ship and killed 46 sailors. The two Koreas have been fierce rivals since the 1950-53 Korean War and about 29,000 people had fled North Korea and arrived in the South, since then, including 1,276 last year. South Korean officials said they disclosed the restaurant workers' group defection because it was an unusual case and happened after tough U.N. sanctions were imposed over Pyongyang's nuclear test and rocket launch this year. Speaking in separate news conferences Monday, the ministry spokesmen confirmed that reports from South Korea's semiofficial Yonhap News Agency on the defection were accurate but said they could give no further details.
– On Friday, South Korea announced that 13 North Korean employees from a restaurant in China had defected into its fold, the AP reports. On Monday, the country added a pair of North Korean officials, one of whom is reportedly a spy-savvy army colonel, in what Reuters calls a "coup for Seoul." One of the new entrants, said by South Korea's defense and unification ministries to have entered South Korea last year, is reportedly a senior North Korean diplomat who was stationed in Africa. But it's the second defector, now being granted political asylum, who's of most interest, as he was linked to the North's clandestine General Reconnaissance Bureau and spent much of his time spying on the South. "He is believed to have stated details about the bureau's operations against South Korea to the authorities here," an official told Yonhap via the BBC, adding the colonel was the highest-ranking military defector there ever. What's odd isn't just the defection of such a high-level official, but also that South Korea is talking about it. Some liberal opposition members say it's a purely political move by the South's conservative president, Park Geun-hye, to nab votes in Wednesday's parliamentary elections. But South Korean officials deny that, saying they spoke up about the defection of the restaurant workers—said by CNN to be 12 women and a man who experienced "pressure from North Korean authorities" to send money home—because there were so many from the same place; the AP notes it's the largest group defection since Kim Jong Un took over in 2011. About 29,000 people have fled the North since the Korean War's 1953 ceasefire, even though the BBC notes it's "almost impossible" for North Koreans to cross the well-guarded borders. (Meanwhile, the North is demanding the South execute some of its own officials.)