A North Korean believed to be a senior official of a youth alliance in the North's Yanggang Province is known to have defected to South Korea last year.

A South Korean government source says that a secretary of the Yanggang Province youth alliance took asylum in the South last year but that his name is unknown. The alliance is a nationwide social organization in North Korea and is also an arm of the ruling Workers' Party.

A North Korean defectors' group in Seoul, meanwhile, says the defector is likely to be Sol Jong-sik.

North Korean diplomats in Northeast Asia and ranking Pyongyang officials in charge of attracting foreign profit are also believed to have recently defected to South Korea.

According to U.S. State Department documents disclosed by the online whistleblower WikiLeaks, former South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan told State Department envoy Robert King during his visit to Seoul in January that many top North Korean officials based overseas have recently defected to the South.