North Korea’s ‘Dolce Vita Defector’ Could Jeopardize Next Trump-Kim Summit
ROME—North Korea’s embassy here is tucked away in an affluent suburb that Benito Mussolini created for a 1942 World’s Fair that never happened. The building that houses both the residence and the chancery is a flat-roofed orange-brick structure with narrow horizontal windows and a gangling antenna that surely is not for Italian television. A narrow back alley is blocked to traffic and the front gate is fortified, but no police or even private security guards are anywhere to be seen. The only thing that differentiates it from the rest of the houses along the street is a sign in Korean, the flag, and surveillance cameras that hang like Christmas ornaments from the umbrella pines and other trees nearby.
Neighbors say that more than 20 people work in the building, but they all go in and out through the back. They attract as little attention as possible.
That changed last week when news broke that Pyongyang’s acting ambassador to Italy, Jo Song Gil, had defected. Now, suddenly, this orange house in a quiet neighborhood appears at the epicenter of an international incident with implications that stretch from Donald Trump’s White House to Moon Jae-in’s Blue House in Seoul and Kim Jong Un’s “Central Luxury Mansion” in Pyongyang.