South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that Pyongyang was plotting “terrorist” attacks targeting Seoul’s officials and citizens overseas, with the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs raising the alert level for diplomatic missions in five countries.
The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) said it had recently “detected numerous signs that North Korea is preparing for terrorist attacks against our embassy staff or citizens in various countries, [such as] China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.”
“North Korea has dispatched agents to these countries to expand surveillance of the South Korean embassies and is also engaging in specific activities such as searching for South Korean citizens as potential terrorist targets,” it said in a statement.
Photo: KCNA via Reuters
The spy agency said it appeared linked to a wave of defections by elite North Koreans who were trapped overseas during the COVID-19 pandemic and are now avoiding returning home after Pyongyang eased strict border controls, having become “skeptical” of the regime.
Pyongyang treats defections as a serious crime and is believed to hand harsh punishments to transgressors, their families and even people tangentially linked to the incident.
North Korean embassy officials might be submitting false reports blaming “external” factors for voluntary defections by their colleagues, in a bid to evade punishment, the NIS said.
As a result, the North may be “plotting retaliation” against South Korean embassy staff on such pretenses, NIS added.
South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday said that it had raised its anti-terrorism alert status for five of its diplomatic missions — embassies in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam as well as its consulates in Russian port city Vladivostok and China’s Shenyang.
Both Seoul and Pyongyang have embassies or consulates in all five locations.
North Korea has diplomatic ties with more than 150 countries, but the number of missions it maintains overseas has shrunk since the 1990s due to financial constraints, Seoul said.
According to South Korean Ministry of Unification, 196 North Korean defectors arrived in the South last year, with about 10 of them being from Pyongyang’s elite class, such as diplomats and possibly their children.
This marked the highest number of defections by North Korean elites to the South since 2017, Seoul said.
“The end of the pandemic has enabled North Korean agents, previously confined within their country, to travel abroad for missions, while South Koreans are also traveling abroad without any restrictions,” South Korean Association for Terrorism Studies president Lee Man-jong said. “Pyongyang appears to be targeting South Korean assets and nationals located in foreign countries with which they have established strong diplomatic ties.”
Experts say the extended overseas stay during the pandemic has led North Korean expatriates to increasingly doubt their country’s isolated regime.
“While living abroad, these North Koreans were able to send their children to normal schools, avoiding propaganda education and the constant need to be obedient to the regime,” said Ahn Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher who runs the World Institute for North Korea Studies. “If North Korean diplomats and agents stationed abroad are continually and brutally pressured by Pyongyang to address defections by elite expats, we cannot rule out the possibility of the North plotting a terrorist attack ... against South Koreans living overseas.”
Pyongyang is suspected of being behind the 1996 killing of a South Korean consul in Vladivostok, Russia, who was attacked and killed by an unidentified assailant.
The consul, also an intelligence agent, had been monitoring Pyongyang’s illicit activities, including drug trafficking and the production of counterfeit banknotes, according to South Korean reports.
Pyongyang also launched an assassination attempt in Myanmar in 1983 when a bomb exploded in a Yangon mausoleum during a visit by then-South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan. He survived, but 21 people, including some of his ministers, were killed.
Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong-un has declared Seoul his country’s “principal enemy,” jettisoned agencies dedicated to reunification and outreach, and threatened war over “even 0.001mm” of territorial infringement.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS