North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is said to have dispatched inspectors overseas to prevent high-profile defections among North Korea's elite in foreign countries.
 
Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency on Thursday quoted a source familiar with North Korea affairs as saying that Kim ordered North Korean embassies, trading firms and restaurants operating overseas to actively eliminate in advance any factors that could lead to their staff fleeing.

Kim is said to have turned furious over the latest defections and also ordered the agencies to prevent their employees from discretely reading South Korean publications and propaganda materials via computers and mobile phones.
 
The report comes as Thae Yong-ho, a minister at the North Korean embassy in London, was confirmed to have defected to South Korea with his family members and after 13 North Koreans who worked at a Pyongyang-owned restaurant in eastern China escaped to the South in April.