A former colonel describes a leadership making cash by any means, from drug factories to illegal arms deals.
In a 30-year career, Kim Kuk-song rose to the top ranks of North Korea's powerful spy agenciesIt has taken weeks of discussions to get an interview with him, and he's still worried about who might be listening. He wears dark glasses for the camera, and only two of our team know what we think is his real name.
He depicts a North Korean leadership desperate to make cash by any means possible, from drug deals to weapons sales in the Middle East and Africa. 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.
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."A 'Terror Force' was formed to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop in secret. I personally directed and carried out the work.
Then, in November that year, dozens of North Korean artillery shells hit the South Korean island of Yeongpyeong. Two soldiers and two civilians were killed. 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.
British security officials believe that a North Korean unit known as the Lazarus Group was behind a cyber-attack that crippled parts of the NHS and other organisations around the world in 2017. The same group is believed to have targeted Sony Pictures in a high-profile hack in 2014. "The production of drugs in Kim Jong-il's North Korea peaked during the Arduous March," he says. "At that time, the Operational Department ran out of revolutionary funds for the Supreme Leader.
"There were special midget-submarines, semi-submersibles. North Korea was very good at building cutting edge equipment like this," he says.But Mr Kim claims that the deals were so successful that North Korea's deputy director in Iran would boast about summoning the Iranians to his swimming pool to do business.
Mr Kim led a privileged life in North Korea. 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. He says he sold rare metals and coal to raise millions in cash, which would be brought back into the country in a suitcase.
Mr Kim was abroad when he read about the execution in a newspaper. He decided to make a plan to flee with his family to South Korea.
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