Choe In-guk gave a statement to media as he arrived in the North to permanently resettle - Uriminzokkiri

A South Korean pensioner has decided to settle in Pyongyang, in an extremely rare case of someone defecting to the North.

Choe In-guk, 73, has followed in the footsteps of his late parents, who in 1986 became the highest-ranking defectors ever to leave the South for the North. He reportedly wanted to live close to where his parents were buried.

According to the North Korean state-run Uriminzokkiri website, Mr Choe said it had been the “will” of his parents that he “follow” them to the reclusive kingdom to work for its unification with South Korea.

Despite a recent diplomatic thaw between North and South Korea during ongoing talks on nuclear disarmament, the two countries still remain technically at war and separated by a highly fortified border after a truce, and not a peace treaty, ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

Defections are more common in the other direction, and fraught with risk for North Koreans who choose to try to escape via China and Thailand. South Koreans still need permission to visit the North and Mr Choe had done so successfully 12 times since 2001, including for his mother’s funeral in 2016.

The pensioner is not a public figure and his decision to defect is likely to make little impact on relations between Pyongyang and Seoul. While highly unusual, it is not a major political coup for the North.

His parents’ defection decades earlier made much bigger political waves. His father Choe Tok-sin had served as foreign minister of South Korea in the 1960s before emigrating to the United States in the 1970s.

He was a strong critic of Park Chung-hee, South Korea’s military leader, and he and his wife, Ryu Mi-yong quickly became members of Pyongyang’s political elite when they moved there.

South Korea’s ministry of unification confirmed the latest Choe family defection on Monday, adding that the government and intelligence authorities were investigating the situation.

The ministry said it was "realistically impossible" to check every movement of South Korean citizens, reported the Korea Times.

"It is difficult for the government to keep updating the whereabouts of an individual citizen," ministry spokesman Lee Sang-min said. "We are teaming up with related organisations to look into details surrounding the case."