In an NBC News Exclusive, the North Korean soldier who made a desperate dash for freedom and made headlines around the world, is speaking out in his first U.S. television interview: For excerpt of this interview
A Chinese border patrol unit plans to use 5G technology to help stem the flow of refugees from North Korea and smuggled goods between the two countries, according to mainland Chinese media.
The unit in Tonghua, Jilin province, signed an agreement with China Mobile – the largest wireless network operator –to build the country’s first 5G checkpoint at Unbong, or Yunfeng Reservoir in Chinese, Legal Daily reported.
“The Yunfeng checkpoint faces great difficulties in [border] control because it is in the mountains and covers a large area with many major road junctions, so [they] decided to set up China’s first 5G border checkpoint there,” the report said. Jian is a key border trading area between China and North Korea and a favorite crossing point for North Korean refugees and smugglers of food, goods and cash.
According to the Legal Daily report, Yunfeng border police would trial the use of new technologies such as virtual reality glasses, simultaneously updating logbooks, drones and 4K night-vision monitors to patrol the border when the 5G network is fully established. The report did not say when the project would be completed.
[South China Morning Post]
Just a month after hosting a summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Vietnam has deported three North Korean refugees, sending them home via China to an uncertain future in their homeland.
The deportations mark a worrying new development for fleeing North Koreans, who previously had been safe if they managed to evade capture in China and reach a third country. Vietnam has been one of Southeast Asian countries that provide safe haven for North Korean escapees, helping them reach South Korea.
The deportations could also be an indication of North Korea’s growing diplomatic clout and lessening isolation since Kim Jong Un stepped onto the global stage over the past year.
Aid workers told South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper that the South Korean Foreign Ministry failed to respond to a request to assist the refugees, a claim the ministry denied. The ministry repeatedly told them to wait, but no assistance was provided before the refugees were sent to China on Wednesday, the aid workers told Chosun Ilbo.
The Foreign Ministry in Seoul denied the report, saying in a statement that the ministry “immediately got in contact with the local authorities and took a stand against forcible repatriation to North Korea.” The ministry declined to comment on the safety and whereabouts of the refugees.
[The Washington Post]
North Korea called on Spanish authorities to investigate a Feb. 22 raid on its embassy in Madrid, calling it a “grave terror attack,” according to Reuters.
During the February incident, a group of 10 people led by U.S. resident Adrian Hong Chang stole computers and documents from the facility, claiming to represent the Cheollima Civil Defense, an activist group that claims to aid defectors from North Korea. The group gagged the embassy’s business envoy So Yun Sok when he turned down their offer to defect.
Adrian Hong Chang then traveled to the United States and contacted the FBI, offering them the materials stolen during the raid, according to Spanish officials. A Spanish judge has issued international arrest warrants for two of the intruders who forced their way into North Korea’s embassy in Madrid last month and are currently believed to be in the United States.
In its first official comment on the incident, North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for a probe and said it was aware of rumors that the FBI helped organize the raid, although it did not go so far as to blame the U.S. for the incident, according to Reuters.
“An illegal intrusion into and occupation of a diplomatic mission and act of theft are a grave breach of state sovereignty and a flagrant violation of international law, and this kind of act should never be tolerated over the globe,” North Korean officials said, according to the news service.
The incident comes amid efforts to improve ties between the U.S. and North Korea, particularly after a second meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un ended without the two leaders reaching a deal.
[Reuters]
A North Korean opposition group accused of a brazen raid of the North Korean embassy in Madrid last month announced that it is “temporarily” suspending operations in the wake of glaring media attention.
“Multiple actions targeting the North Korean regime were being prepared, but because of speculative attack articles in the media, the activities of action groups have been temporarily suspended,” the group, Cheollima Civil Defense, which is also known as Free Joseon, said in a Korean-language statement on its website. “We ask the media to refrain from taking interest in the identity of this group and its members.”
Earlier this week, a Spanish judge unsealed court documents related to the daylight embassy “assault,” as it was described by Spanish authorities, and named several individuals suspected to be involved including the purported ringleader, Adrian Hong Chang, a U.S. resident.
The assailants left the embassy with computers, hard drives and other electronics using embassy vehicles and, for Hong Chang and an associate, a ride-share car that had been arranged under the name Oswaldo Trump, according to the judicial report reviewed by ABC News.
On Tuesday, Cheollima Civil Defense claimed responsibility for the incident and apologized to Spain for involving the European nation in the group’s struggle against the North Korean regime.
“Our fight is only against the regime’s practices and on behalf of millions of our enslaved people,” reads a statement posted on a website that appears to belong to the group, whose involvement was first reported by The Washington Post.
[ABC]
On February 22 of this year, Spanish media reported that police investigated a group of unidentified assailants who raided the North Korean Embassy in Madrid, and reportedly seized flash drives, two computers, two hard drives and a mobile phone.
On Tuesday, the Spanish High Court released a document that identified Adrian Hong Chang, a U.S. resident, as the leader of the raid. He was said to have been wearing a jacket with a pin of Kim Jong Un, and tricked police who arrived at the scene into thinking that he was a member of staff at the embassy.
Once the Executive Director of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), an NGO supporting North Korean refugees, back in 2006 Adrian Hong was arrested in Beijing when helping defectors escape through Liaoning, a Chinese province that borders North Korea.
Hannah Song, the CEO of Liberty in North Korea, told TIME via email that Hong co-founded the group as a college student, and has had no involvement with it for more than 10 years.
A group called Cheollima Civil Defense has since claimed responsibility for the incident on its website, and said it shared information “of enormous potential value” with the FBI under “mutually agreed terms of confidentiality.” But the group denied that any intimidation was involved, and said claims that individuals brandished weapons and attacked embassy workers were false.
Cheollima Civil Defense (CCD), which also goes by the name ‘Free Joseon,’ calls itself an “organization of refugees who escaped North Korea” that aims to “shake the Kim Jong Un regime.” Its sporadically updated website states that the group has “already helped many North Korean people” and expects nothing in return for its services.
Last week, CCD embedded a video posted to its YouTube channel of a person, appeared blurred on camera, violently smashing portraits of the Kim family. The video description read, “Down with Kim family rule! For our people we rise up! Long live Free Joseon!”
According to NK News, Hong served as head of the Joseon Institute from 2015, described on its website as a “think tank conducting policy-relevant research and planning” on North Korean affairs. The organization’s Facebook page was last updated in August 2017. Adrian Hong is also identified as the Managing Director of consultancy firm Pegasus Strategies, a human rights advocate and writer based in the U.S.
Hong has also written on North Korea-related topics for publications including New York Times, Foreign Policy and The Atlantic.
According to the court document, the assailants flew to Portugal after the attack. From there, they took a flight to New York. Hong, however, split from the group and flew to New Jersey. Spain has issued international arrest warrants against him and another suspect, Sam Ryu, who is a U.S. citizen of Korean descent.
[TIME]
A Spanish court says assailants , which included a U.S. citizen and another resident, who broke into North Korea’s Embassy in Madrid last month later fled to the U.S.
The leader of the plot fled to Newark, N.J., and offered stolen material to the FBI in New York. A spokesman for the FBI’s New York field office, Martin Feely, told NPR in an email that the FBI had no comment.
Late Tuesday, a Web site apparently associated with a secretive North Korean dissident movement called “Free Joseon” published a statement claiming the group carried out an operation at the North Korean Embassy in Madrid. The Madrid incident occurred on Feb. 22, just days before the second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam. That summit ended in a stalemate after the U.S. and North Korea could not agree on a deal.
In the afternoon of Feb. 22, the statement says, U.S. resident Adrian Hong Chang asked to see the business supervisor at the embassy before letting the rest of the group in. After several hours, the individuals took off in three embassy cars, carrying stolen pen drives, computers, hard drives and cellphones with them. The statement says the 10 alleged assailants split into four groups and immediately fled to Portugal, where they took flights to New York and New Jersey.
Spanish judge José de la Mata says Hong contacted the FBI four days after arriving in New York via Newark, allegedly offering to hand over material stolen from the embassy. The statement says he admitted to having perpetrated the attack on the embassy with a group of other, unidentified individuals.
The Free Joseon statement adds that, “The organization shared certain information of enormous potential value with the FBI in the United States, under mutually agreed terms of confidentiality. … Those terms appear to have been broken.”
[NPR]
A shadowy North Korean dissident group claimed responsibility for last month’s raid on Pyongyang’s embassy in Madrid but disputed allegations that what occurred at the diplomatic compound was an “attack” involving armed intruders.
Cheollima Civil Defense (CCD), a secretive organization whose goal is to overthrow the Kim regime in North Korea, denied that any other foreign governments were involved in the operation or that it was related to President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s summit in Hanoi, which occurred days later.
“This was not an attack. …Contrary to reports, no one was gagged or beaten. Out of respect for the host nation of Spain, no weapons were used. All occupants in the embassy were treated with dignity and necessary caution. There were no other governments involved with or aware of our activity until after the event,” a statement released by CCD said.
The alleged incident, was carried out by 10 people who a Spanish judge says identified “themselves as members of an association or human rights movement for the liberation of North Korea.” The judge also said he believes the identified intruders, which include American and South Korean citizens, traveled to the US after the attack.
State Department deputy spokesperson Robert Palladino said Tuesday that the US government “had nothing to do with” the attack at the embassy. He also noted that the US “would always call for the protection of embassies belonging to any diplomatic mission throughout the world.”
The Cheollima Civil Defense first gained international recognition after it reportedly came to the defense of Kim Han Sol, the son of Kim Jong Nam. Kim Jong Nam, the elder half-brother of North Korea’s leader, was exposed to the deadly nerve agent VX in 2017 while entering an airport in Kuala Lumpur, killing him in minutes. “The Cheollima Civil Defense established credibility by acting quickly and getting Kim Han Sol, the son of Kim Jong Nam, within days of his father’s gruesome assassination,” said Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor at Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
[CNN]
Anyone in North Korea who is discovered to be a Christian is quickly eradicated from society into detention centers, re-education camps and maximum-security hard labor prison camps known as the Kwan-li-so where political prisoners are often sent.
“Open Doors” estimates there are 250,000 imprisoned North Koreans—50,000 of which are political prisoners jailed for their Christian faith. Following, a North Korean prison camp survivor walks us through her difficult journey in a North Korean prison:
I was in China because I needed to feed myself and my family. It was there that I met some Christians. I was touched by them. They never really spoke about the gospel, but I participated in their worship services.
Then one day a black car pulled up next to me. I thought the man wanted to ask for directions, but the driver and other men stepped out of the car and grabbed me. I tried to get away, but they pushed me into the car.
After a few weeks in a Chinese prison cell, I was brought to this North Korean prison. The first day, I had to strip off all my clothes, and they searched every part of my body to see if I had hidden anything, money especially. They shaved off all my hair and brought me to a prison cell.
The name I was born with was the first thing they took away from me when I arrived at the prison. Every morning at 8 a.m., they call for “42.” To get to them, I have to crawl on my elbows through the cat-flap. When I stand up, I must keep my head down. I’m not allowed to look at the guards.
Each day begins the same. I put my hands behind my back and follow the guards to the interrogation room. Each day for an hour, they ask the same questions: “Why were you in China?”, “Are you a Christian?”, “Who did you meet”, “Did you go to church?”, and “Did you have a Bible?”
Every day, I’m beaten and kicked—it hurts the most when they hit my ears. My ears ring for hours, sometimes days. The space in my cell is so small I can barely lie down. It isn’t often that I get to lie down. They force me to sit on my knees with closed fists and never allow me to open them.
[Read full story of this North Korean defector]
Estimates vary about how many Christians are in North Korea, but persecution watchdog group Open Doors places the number around 300,000, most of whom operate in secret networks of tiny house churches.
Christianity is illegal in North Korea and possessing a Bible, holding open religious services or making any attempt to build underground church networks can result in torture, lengthy prison terms or execution.
A North Korean defector, identified only as J.M., shared how he encountered Christianity after he fled to China in 1998. He was arrested by Chinese police and sent back home in 2001, and after serving several months in prison he attempted to share his faith with his parents. In 2002, J.M. escaped to South Korea so he could worship freely, and is today a Seoul-based pastor trying to promote Christianity in North Korea.
Pastor Peter Jung explains that his group provides shelter, food, and money to North Koreans visiting Chinese border towns. Before they return home, Jung said his group asks the North Korean visitors to memorize Bible verses or carry Bibles with them to share the Gospel with their friends and family.
Jung’s wife, Lee Han Byeol, also a North Korean refugee living in Seoul, recalled watching her father pray whenever her mother slipped into China. “I saw him praying many times. … My mom risked her life to go to China illegally to feed our family.” Lee said she didn’t know about Christianity at the time, as her father kept his faith to himself until his death in an apparent effort to protect his family.
According to statistics from the U.S. State Department, an estimated 120,000 Christians, defectors, and political dissidents are imprisoned in North Korean labor concentration camps where they face brutal torture.
[Christian Examiner]