SEOUL - A senior North Korean diplomat based in Cuba defected to South Korea in November, a South Korean newspaper said on Tuesday, becoming the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat to escape to the South since 2016.

Before fleeing to the South, Ri Il Kyu, 52, was a counsellor at the North Korean embassy in Cuba, the Chosun Ilbo said citing an interview with Ri.

Among Ri's jobs at the embassy was to block North Korea's rival South Korea and old ally Cuba from forging diplomatic ties, the newspaper reported. In February, the two countries established diplomatic relations.

Details on North Koreans defections often take months to come to light, with defectors needing to be cleared by authorities and going through a course of education about South Korean society and systems.

Ri entered North Korea's foreign ministry in 1999 and received a commendation from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for successfully negotiating with Panama to lift the detention of a North Korean ship caught carrying arms from Cuba in 2013, Chosun said.

He told the newspaper he had decided to defect over disillusionment with the regime and unfair evaluation of his work.

The last such known high-profile defection to the South was that of Tae Yong-ho, a former North Korean deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, in 2016.

The South's unification ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, declined to confirm the report, citing privacy issues.

North Korea last year shut some embassies in an effort to "rearrange its diplomatic capacity efficiently", closures that South Korea says indicates the North is struggling under the burden of sanctions.

North Korea maintains an embassy in Cuba, though its ambassador returned home in March, according to media reports.

  - Reuters