A12| Saturday/Sunday, April 4 - 5, 2020 *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
girl behind. She then asked to
return to Pyongyang to be
with her grandparents, the let-
ter said.
Mr. Jo was unreachable and
Free Joseon declined to elabo-
rate on the girl’s situation.
North Korea observers say
it’s possible the Jos purposely
left their daughter behind,
given the history of defectors
who have made a difficult de-
cision to leave loved ones be-
hind.
Other observers say they
believe it’s more likely the girl
was left behind as part of
some mishap. Once defections
are under way, they cannot be
halted, given the risks the plot
would be uncovered and ev-
eryone involved executed.
Italy’s foreign ministry pro-
vided no further information
other than to confirm the girl
was sent back. North Korea’s
embassy in Rome declined to
comment.A fake kidnapping
The trouble surrounding
Mr. Jo’s daughter triggered
soul-searching within Free Jo-
seon, according to people fa-
miliar with the group’s think-
ing.
For a potential extraction of
a diplomat and his family in
Madrid, the group came up
with the idea of making it look
like a kidnapping instead of a
defection, those people said.
That might just save the man’s
family from vengeance by the
Kim regime, the group rea-
soned.
On the team were Mr. Ahn;a Korean American film stu-
dent; and a North Korean de-
fector. Also in the group were
at least five men carrying
South Korean passports, ac-
cording to Spanish court docu-
ments.
Those documents and inter-
views with law-enforcement
sources laid out a chain of
events starting several months
before the operation, when the
group checked into a hotel
near the embassy to scout out
the site.
In February 2019, Mr. Hong
approached the embassy,
where he identified himself as
Matthew Chao, a managing
partner of a fictitious invest-
ment fund. Mr. Hong said he
would like to speak to So Yun
Suk, the commercial attaché—
the man he’d eventually try to
extract.
Mr. So came to the door,
where the two men held a
brief conversation. It’s unclear
what they discussed.
Two weeks later, Mr. Hong
returned, and approached the
North Korean Embassy at
about 5 p.m.
This time, members of Free
Joseon were standing out of
sight up the road. They had
ski masks and fake pistols,
plus knives, pipes, handcuffs,
duct tape, a collapsible ladder
and bags.
The person at the door rec-
ognized Mr. Hong, who
claimed to have an appoint-
ment with Mr. So. The man in-
vited him inside the embassy
wall.
Left alone, Mr. Hong
opened the outer gate for his
associates, according to inves-
tigators.
Brandishing fake guns, they
bound the wrists of the North
Koreans and placed bags over
their heads.
A spokesman for Free Jo-
seon said the men entered the
embassy peacefully and they
placed bags over the heads of
the embassy staff for every-
one’s safety, including Free Jo-
seon’s.
While the group subdued
staff on the first floor, they
missed one woman on the sec-
ond floor.
Believing the embassy was
under attack, she had hidden
in her room and then climbed
out on her terrace and
jumped.
She hit her head, which be-
gan to bleed, and injured her
leg. She limped through a side
entrance to the street. She
hailed a passing motorist who
drove her to a clinic down the
road.
Police officers arriving on
the scene couldn’t understand
what she was saying. Using
Google Translate, they realized
she was claiming intruders
had invaded North Korea’s em-
bassy nearby.
More than an hour into the
invasion, three Spanish policerang the doorbell, startling the
Free Joseon group inside.
Mr. Hong headed to the
door, where he pretended to
be a North Korean diplomat.
Greeting the police in Spanish,
he assured them everything
was fine. The police decided
not to push the issue at the
door, but remained parked
outside the embassy. Mr. Hong
went back inside.
Free Joseon had isolated
Mr. So, the senior diplomat,
taken off his handcuffs and re-
moved the bag over his head.
Members explained that
their group was dedicated to
human rights and urged Mr.
So to defect, according to peo-
ple familiar with Free Joseon’s
account. His wife and son, who
also lived in the embassy, were
being held separately from the
other staff members. If they
left now, the family could
plausibly say they were kid-
napped, reducing conse-
quences for his relatives back
home, the Free Joseon mem-
bers assured him.
Fearing his safety without a
clear path to asylum, Mr. So
refused, according to those
people familiar. The fact that
the police were lurking outside
didn’t help.
A person who answered the
intercom at North Korea’s em-
bassy in Madrid declined to
comment. Mr. So couldn’t be
reached for comment.
A lawyer for Mr. Hong, Lee
Wolosky, said in a written
statement that photographic
evidence demonstrates Free
Joseon members were invited
into the embassy. He said em-
bassy staff were later inter-
viewed by Spanish authorities
in the presence of more senior
North Korean officials, making
their accounts “inherently un-
reliable.”
Eventually Mr. Hong’s
group gave up on trying to
convince Mr. So. They re-
turned him to a conference
room where other embassy
staff were being held.
Free Joseon members ran-
sacked offices looking for use-
ful intelligence. They grabbed
two pen drives, two laptops, a
cellphone and a hard drive
connected to an internal video
camera.
More than four hours had
passed since the invasion be-
gan. At least three police pa-
trol cars were waiting outside.
Mr. Hong’s group found the
keys to three embassy vehi-
cles. They drove out the front
gate and passed the waiting
police who took them for
North Korean diplomats, and
got away.
Mr. Hong stayed behind to
ensure no one tipped off po-
lice. Then he and one other
group member slipped over a
back wall, raced across a lot
behind the embassy and called
an Uber under the alias Os-
waldo Trump.Disappeared
Back in the U.S., according
to court documents and people
familiar with events, Mr. Hong
scheduled a meeting with the
Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion, where he turned over
material from the embassy, ex-
pecting agents to view him as
an informant working in the
national interest.
The FBI decided it was too
risky to engage with a group
carrying out such operations
on foreign soil. The agents di-
vulged Mr. Hong’s identity to
Spanish authorities.
The FBI declined to com-
ment.
Spanish authorities pieced
together the events and fig-
ured out the names of other
Free Joseon team members.
Spanish authorities have
charged Mr. Hong and four
others with a range of crimes
including breaking and enter-
ing, assault, hostage taking,
theft and forgery.
In April, U.S. Marshals
broke down the door in a Los
Angeles apartment used by
Mr. Hong.
He had already gone under-
ground. The FBI had earlier in-
formed Free Joseon that it had
received credible intelligence
of a threat involving North Ko-
rean assassins against the life
of Mr. Hong and other group
members.
Inside the apartment was
Mr. Ahn, who was arrested. He
was released on bail in July,
while his lawyers prepare for
the extradition trial. His law-
yers declined to comment.
The others remain at large.
A wanted poster published in
April 2019 for Mr. Hong said
he was last seen driving a
white 2017 KIA Soul with li-
cense plate “ARDENT.”
He hasn’t been seen since.
—Giovanni Legorano and
Ethan Millman contributed
to this article.mat in Italy, Jo Song Gil,
hasn’t been reported before.
North Korea has deployed
assassins to target members of
the group, according to U.S.
intelligence cited by an Ameri-
can judge over the summer.
After multiple Free Joseon at-
tempts to lure away North Ko-
rean diplomats, those living
abroad were given a lecture at
a meeting last summer in
Pyongyang about loyalty to
the regime, according to two
people familiar with intelli-
gence about the event.
The operations of Free Jo-
seon and its founder, a Yale-
educated former human-rights
activist named Adrian Hong,
have split North Korea watch-
ers, who argue over whether
he is a rogue meddler who
risks doing more harm than
good, or an admirable oppo-
nent of a harsh regime.
Free Joseon and Mr. Hong
have gone mostly quiet since
an ambitious operation in
Spain last year went wrong. In
a cascade of mishaps, mem-
bers aborted the mission and
made dramatic escapes to the
U.S.
Organized resistance to the
regime inside North Korea is
almost unheard of. Suspected
dissenters are sent to concen-
tration camps, often with their
families. In the absence of any
internal opposition, North Ko-
rean exiles and freelancers like
Free Joseon have stepped in.
“Joseon” is the name of an an-
cient Korean kingdom and is
still used by North Korea to
refer to itself. This is the full-
est account yet of the group
and its activities.
Mr. Hong, 36, and other
members are in hiding to
avoid arrest and extradition to
Spain. One associate, a former
Marine named Christopher
Ahn, was captured by U.S.
Marshals and is out on bail on
the condition he doesn’t com-
municate with the group. He is
fighting extradition.
A spokesman for Free Jo-
seon said the group has pro-
vided valuable intelligence to
foreign governments, includ-
ing about North Korea’s nu-
clear program. It declined to
comment on many specific
matters related to its activi-
ties, including defections.
A U.S. official said Mr. Hong
has helped hundreds of North
Koreans defect, and added
that Free Joseon isn’t funded
or directed by the U.S. govern-
ment.
A tightknit operation
Free Joseon’s roots date to
the early 2000s, when Mr.
Hong—raised by Korean Amer-
ican missionary parents in
Southern California—was a
history major at Yale. Inspired
by a memoir of a North Ko-
rean escapee, Mr. Hong helped
found a nongovernmental or-
ganization called Liberty in
North Korea.
At the time, North Korean
refugees were pouring over
the country’s border with
China seeking to escape fam-
ine and the country’s brutal
police state. China sent cap-
tured refugees back to North
Korea. Many were tortured or
killed.
Mr. Hong said in public
talks that he organized teams
to develop safe houses for ref-
ugees in China so they could
reach friendly embassies or
countries open to helping
them. The work was illegal un-
der Chinese law. Mr. Hong said
his group set up dozens of
safe houses and aided hun-
dreds of successful defections.
He eventually broke with
Liberty in North Korea. Han-
nah Song, the group’s current
president, said it no longer
has any connection to him.
Mr. Hong began networking
to form Free Joseon. Initially
called Cheollima Civil Defense,
it grew into a tightknit opera-
tion involving scores of peo-
ple, according to those famil-
iar with the group. Its
members helped identify high-
ranking North Koreans who
might be willing to defect and
relied on encrypted communi-
cations.
Mr. Hong used multiple
phones, carried his electronics
in a bag lined with a metallic
fabric that blocks digital
eavesdropping, and met con-
tacts in corners of obscure ho-
tel lobbies around the world,
those people said.
Mr. Hong’s project became
ContinuedfromPageOne
Kim’s
Hidden
Antagonist
FROM PAGE ONE
safe house, according to peo-
ple familiar with their moves,
and Mr. Hong arranged to de-
liver them to a Western gov-
ernment as political asylum
seekers.
News of Mr. Jo’s defection
leaked out thousands of miles
away in South Korea, where
intelligence sources learned of
it through their own channels.
Then reports emerged that
Mr. Jo and his wife fled with-
out their daughter, who North
Korean officials have said suf-fers from an undisclosed psy-
chological disorder. The girl
had been left behind in the
embassy and was sent back to
Pyongyang.
That alarmed some Italian
officials, given North Korea’s
history of brutal punishments
on families of suspected politi-
cal dissidents.
After Italian officials pub-
licly raised concerns about the
matter, North Korea’s embassy
sent a letter to Mr. Napoli. The
letter said the defections were
spurred by a “family quarrel”
between Mr. Jo and his wife
over how to care for their
daughter’s condition. Follow-
ing an intense dispute, the
pair walked out of the em-
bassy, intentionally leaving the‘He was so
intrinsically North
Korean, we were all
shocked.’public in 2017 after the mur-
der of Kim Jong Un’s half
brother, Kim Jong Nam. U.S.
officials have blamed the at-
tack on North Korea, which it
denies.
Messrs. Hong and Ahn, the
former Marine, raced to
Macau and escorted Kim Jong
Nam’s family to Taiwan, where
agents from a Western intelli-
gence agency helped them
travel to a third country.
A month after the killing of
Kim Jong Nam, Cheollima Civil
Defense introduced a website
showing a short video of his
son, Kim Han Sol.
The video was interpreted
by many North Korea experts
as an effort to show Kim Jong
Un that other family members,
who could potentially head a
new government someday, re-
mained safe.
Over the next year, the
website boasted of two more
rescues and encouraged others
to ask for the group’s help.Trouble in Italy
When it came to extracting
North Korea’s top diplomat in
Italy in 2018, Mr. Hong
couldn’t have asked for a bet-
ter setup than the North Ko-
rean Embassy in Rome. The
compound sits in a posh sub-
urb where chauffeurs often
wait in vehicles, making it
easy for a getaway driver to
blend in.
Getting to Mr. Jo was the
hard part. North Korean diplo-
mats are rarely allowed to be
alone in public, part of a
Pyongyang policy to prevent
people like Mr. Hong from lur-
ing them to defect or recruit-
ing them into foreign intelli-
gence.
Several Italian lawmakers
and activists said Mr. Jo, who
dressed in dark suits and the
“Supreme Leader” pin that
North Koreans must wear,
launched into a defense of the
country at the slightest hint of
criticism.
“He was so intrinsically
North Korean, we were all
shocked” when he defected,
said Osvaldo Napoli, an Italian
lawmaker who heads a com-
mission on cooperation with
North Korea and met Mr. Jo
multiple times.
Mr. Jo was living in Rome
with his wife and a daughter,
then 17 years old, a sign of
trust given that some North
Korean officials overseas must
leave loved ones in Pyongyang
as insurance against defection.
It’s unclear exactly how and
when Mr. Hong and Mr. Jo
met, but a person familiar
with the matter said that Mr.
Hong adopted the pretext of
being a businessman inter-
ested in investing in North Ko-
rea.
After the Jos walked out of
the embassy, the Free Joseon
driver took the couple to aAbove, second from right, Jo Song Gil, who was North Korea’s top diplomat in Italy, pictured in 2018. Below, surveillance video shows
Christopher Ahn at Madrid’s North Korean embassy.ASSOCIATED PRESS (LEFT); U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE/ASSOCIATED PRESSJUNG YEON-JE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESAbove: Adrian Hong. Left: Kim
Han Sol, son of Kim Jong Nam,
who thanked Mr. Hong for aiding
his escape.U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE/ASSOCIATED PRESS