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Drugs, arms, and terror: A high-profile defector on Kim's North Korea - BBC News

Drugs, arms, and terror: A high-profile defector on Kim's North Korea - BBC News

Drugs, arms, and terror: A high-profile defector on Kim's North Korea - BBC News
Oct 11, 2021 4 mins, 3 secs

He had to flee for his life in 2014, and since then he has been living in Seoul and working for South Korean intelligence.

He told us about the strategy behind decisions being made in Pyongyang, the regime's attacks on South Korea, and claims that the secretive country's spy and cyber networks can reach around the world.

Mr Kim's last few years in North Korea's top intelligence unit offer some insight into the early career of the current leader, Kim Jong-un.

North Korea formed a new spy agency called the Reconnaissance General Bureau in 2009, just as Kim Jong-un was being groomed to succeed his father, who had suffered a stroke.

The colonel said that in May 2009, an order came down the chain of command to form a "terror task force" to kill a former North Korean official who had defected to the South.

Pyongyang always denied it was involved and claimed South Korea had staged the attempt.

"In North Korea, terrorism is a political tool that protects the highest dignity of Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un", he says.

A year later, in 2010, a South Korean navy ship, the Cheonan, sank after being hit by a torpedo.

Then, in November that year, dozens of North Korean artillery shells hit the South Korean island of Yeongpyeong.

"In North Korea, even when a road is built, it cannot be done without the direct approval of the Supreme Leader.

Mr Kim says one of his responsibilities in the North was developing strategies to deal with South Korea.

"There are many cases where I directed spies to go to South Korea and performed operative missions through them.

"There was a case where a North Korean agent was dispatched and worked at the Presidential Office in South Korea and returned to North Korea safely.

After working for the Blue House (South Korea's Presidential Office) for five to six years, he came back safely and worked at the 314 Liaison Office of the Labor Party.

"I can tell you that North Korean operatives are playing an active role in various civil society organisations as well as important institutions in South Korea.".

I have met several convicted North Korean spies in South Korea, and, as NK News founder Chad O'Carroll notes in a recent article, South Korean prisons were once filled with dozens of North Korean spies arrested over the decades for various types of espionage work.

But NK News data suggests that far fewer people have been arrested in South Korea for spy-related offenses since 2017, as the North turns to new technologies, rather than old fashioned spies, for intelligence gathering.

North Korea may be one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries, but previous high-profile defectors have warned that Pyongyang has created an army of 6,000 skilled hackers.

According to Mr Kim, the previous North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, ordered the training of new personnel in the 1980s "to prepare for cyberwarfare".

He claims it had a direct telephone line to the North Korean leader.

"To help you understand, all the money in North Korea belongs to the North Korean leader," he says.

North Korean weapons deals with Iran have been an open secret since the 1980s and even included ballistic missiles, according to Professor Andrei Lankov, one of the world's leading authorities on North Korea.

North Korea has continued to advance the development of weapons of mass destruction, despite being subject to strict international sanctions.

He claims he was given use of a Mercedes-Benz car by Kim Jong-un's aunt, and allowed to travel abroad freely to raise money for the North Korean leader.

There had long been suggestions that Mr Jang was the de-facto leader of North Korea, as Kim Jong-il's health faded.

He decided to make a plan to flee with his family to South Korea.

"To abandon my country, where my ancestor's grave and family is, and to escape to South Korea, which at the time for me was a foreign land, was the worst grief-stricken decision of emotional distress," he says.

There are also many in South Korea who doubt defectors' accounts of their lives.

His account should be read as part of North Korea's story - not the whole?

Kim Jong-un has hinted he may be willing to talk to South Korea in the near future, if certain conditions are met.

"It's been years since I came here, but North Korea hasn't changed at all," he says

What you need to know is that North Korea hasn't changed 0.01%."

A high-profile defector opens up on Kim's N Korea

A high-profile defector opens up on Kim's N Korea

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