THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER23, 2020 51
of foreign affairs from 1978 until he de-
fected, in 1991, told me that, because
South Korea doesn’t recognize North
Korea as a sovereign nation, citizens can
face legal consequences for proposing
governments-in-exile. Relations between
the two Koreas often vary according to
which party controls the South Korean
government. The current administration,
led by Moon Jae-in, promotes engage-
ment with North Korea, and defectors
fear losing their new citizenship by ag-
itating against the country.
Two of the people I met at the res-
taurant were from the West. They had
become involved with the group, in part,
because they felt that people who were
thought of as experts on North Korea—
journalists, policymakers, and academ-
ics—frequently misrepresented how its
society functioned. “There is no other
subject area where the majority of the
scholars in the subject do not speak the
language,” one of them told me. The tes-
timony of prominent defectors goes un-
heeded, because they often don’t speak
English, and live under assumed identities.
The third person was from North
Korea. The member met Adrian around
2008, in Seoul, where the member had
defected; they discussed ways to liber-
ate the people of North Korea, who, the
member said, are like “frogs inside a
well.” They’re curious about the outside,
but even the most privileged members
of the society are held back by their lack
of understanding of the world. “We
needed an action-oriented network in-
ternationally, and Adrian fit the bill,”
the member said. “He focussed on mak-
ing friends in the West.” The other mem-
ber added, “Adrian actually did, as a
non-North Korean, what I had only
ever seen North Korean refugees do:
risk his life without advertising it.”
By 2014, the two members had joined
the group. “It’s not like there was any
salary, a title, headquarters, or a badge.
But we have a strategy and a vision,” one
of them said. “There is no one else, no
other entity in the world, that is work-
ing to represent the North Korean peo-
ple, as opposed to the North Korean
state.” Adrian wrote the first draft of the
group’s declaration of independence, and
other members revised it. The document
was crafted to appeal to conservatives
and liberals, defectors and those still in-
side North Korea, Koreans and non-
Koreans. “We are not anti-unification or
pro-unification,” a Free Joseon member
told me. Adrian borrowed from other
declarations of independence, including
that of the United States. He also took
a line from the Chinese national anthem:
“Arise! Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves!”
In the spring of 2017, between forty
and fifty members of Free Joseon gath-
ered in New York City. They settled on
a number of priorities, among them res-
cuing prominent North Koreans. In re-
cent years, about a thousand diplomats,
leaders of the Workers’ Party of Korea,
doctors, and other citizens who were con-
sidered loyal to the regime have defected.
Because these élites are under greater
scrutiny than the general population, they
require elaborate arrangements to flee
the country. Once they defect, they con-
nect Free Joseon to other élites.
Often, when such defectors make it
out, they change their identities; if their
escape becomes widely known, their
family members in North Korea may
be killed. The “generational penalty,”
which was instituted by Kim Il Sung,
the original Great Leader, extends for
three generations. In 2018, the acting
Ambassador to Italy and his wife fled
the North Korean Embassy in Rome
and went into hiding, reportedly in
Seoul. Their teen-age daughter was re-
patriated to North Korea, and has not
been heard from since.
“That is what keeps North Koreans
in place. To be able to protest, you needto be prepared to be responsible for the
death of someone you love,” one of the
Free Joseon members told me. “That is
why there cannot be an internal upris-
ing in North Korea. That is why the
group came into being.”
Other Free Joseon operations were
aimed at demystifying the Kim family.
On March 11, 2019, a few weeks after the
Madrid Embassy incident, members of
Free Joseon spray-painted the wall of the
North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lum-pur with the words “Free Joseon” and
“We shall rise,” as well as the Free Jo-
seon logo. Nine days later, they released
a video of a person removing framed
portraits of the previous Great Leaders,
the father and grandfather of Kim Jong
Un, from a wall of the Madrid Embassy,
and smashing them on the ground. These
images are sacred in North Korea, and
defacing them is unthinkable to average
citizens. Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor of
Korean studies at Tufts’ Fletcher School,
told me, “That taboo has been broken.
There is a historical powerful symbol-
ism here.” One of the Free Joseon mem-
bers said, “The whole point of the group
was to be a public symbol, so that North
Koreans abroad and internally could see
that there was hope in resisting.”
The three representatives I met in
Europe said that the group had hun-
dreds of members, in ten countries.
Adrian estimated that there were thou-
sands, in more than fifteen countries.
Both numbers are impossible to verify,
and the vagueness seems to be inten-
tional. The group operates in a decen-
tralized manner, so that, if one member
is arrested, others won’t be jeopardized.
Members use call signs to communi-
cate through encrypted platforms; if
they meet in person during an opera-
tion, they typically don’t learn one an-
other’s true identity. The secrecy is im-
perative, because “one loose link leads
to people inside,” a member told me.
The compartmentalization of Free Jo-
seon is so thorough that, in an odd way,
its structure reminded me of the opac-
ity of the North Korean system. The
more I tried to follow Free Joseon, the
more it became obvious that Adrian was
the only person who really knew the ex-
tent of the group.
In the U.S., a Free Joseon member
told me that he had been involved in
several operations, all of them rescue
missions involving élite defectors. He
said that, beyond the core members,
there were people who did discreet tasks;
he called them “trusted sources.” He ar-
ranged a meeting for me with one at an
ice-cream shop on Sunset Boulevard,
in Los Angeles. A young Asian woman
of about thirty, with blond highlights,
came up to me and said a prearranged
phrase: “I hope you like ice cream.” The
woman, who met Adrian eight years
ago, through her church, helped the