group with Web design and occasion-
ally gave it small donations. Sitting at
a table facing a busy intersection, she
opened her computer and showed me
a video of a man in a khaki military
jacket sitting on a sofa and signing a
paper revealing his name, his official po-
sition, and the destination of his exile.
She said that the man had been a high-
level official in the North Korean gov-
ernment, whom Free Joseon helped to
defect by faking an accident. Appar-
ently, he had been declared missing by
the North Korean government but was
now living under an assumed name in
a location that only the group knew.
Other people were recruited for a sin-
gle operation. Charles Ryu, who is
twenty-six, grew up an orphan in North
Korea. When he was fourteen, he es-
caped to China but was caught and re-
turned to North Korea, where he was
put in a labor camp. He escaped again
when he was sixteen. In 2017, Ryu, who
is now a software engineer, joined LiNK
as an I.T. intern. He exchanged e-mails
with Adrian but did not meet him until
February, 2019, when he flew to Madrid
to help him. “It was an honor,” Ryu said.
“For me, it was personal, this brother-
hood I felt with Adrian.” He describes
the Madrid operation as a historic mo-
ment, the closest he’s come to North Ko-
rean territory since his defection. “I was
really happy and saw the day when I
could again be with my friends and neigh-
bors,” Ryu told me. “It was amazing.”O
n February 14, 2017, at 9 p.m., Chris
Ahn was drinking his fifth San
Miguel of the day at the rooftop bar of
a backpacker hostel in Manila. He had
been there for a week. Chris, a former
marine who had served in Fallujah be-
fore getting an M.B.A. from the Uni-
versity of Virginia, was between con-
sulting jobs when a close friend suggested
a vacation to his home town. At the last
minute, the friend had to work, so Chris
had gone alone.
At the bar, his cell phone rang. It
was Adrian.
Chris had a history of volunteering.
In high school, he was active in the Key
Club; after he returned from Iraq, he
worked with a veterans’-advocacy group.
Chris’s parents were Korean immigrants
who ran a clothing shop in downtown
Los Angeles. When Chris was a junior
in high school, his father died, and Chris
began running the store. The family
moved to Chino Hills, about an houraway, where many Koreans now live.
Chris took care of his mother, his grand-
mother, and a younger sibling. In 2000,
he enlisted in the Marines. In 2005, he
was deployed to Iraq, where he joined
his battalion’s intelligence shop. Michael
Davis, a battery gunnery sergeant at
Camp Fallujah, described Chris as “a
good all-American boy,” and told me
that he “stood out for his dedication and
devotion to his country and to his fellow-
marines.” Ryan Fisher, a friend from
business school, told me that on the night
Osama bin Laden’s death was announced
Chris brought an American flag to a vet-
erans’ gathering at a bar. “It was really
big,” Fisher said. “Not many people have
a flag that big in their personal posses-
sion. He was proudly waving it.”
In 2009, a mutual acquaintance in-
troduced Chris to Adrian, and the two
met at Lolita’s, a burrito joint in San
Diego. Chris was less compelled by the
specific situation in North Korea than
by the general idea of being helpful. “I’m
just a regular guy who was trying to help
those who needed help,” Chris told me.
“To me, that’s just what Americans do.”
Adrian took Chris to meetings at the
Joseon Institute, which briefly had an
office in New York, where a few North
Korean defectors—including a former
military officer—discussed the situa-
tion in North Korea. In 2011, they also
met for half an hour in D.C. with U.S.
government officials who specialized in
North Korea. Chris said, “They were very
simpatico with what Adrian was doing.”
Now Adrian asked Chris where he
was. “Holy shit, it’s perfect,” Adrian said,
when Chris told him that he was in
Manila. “You know what’s happened
with Kim Jong Nam, right?” Chris did.
The day before Adrian’s call, the eldest
son of Kim Jong Il had been assassi-
nated at the Kuala Lumpur airport, by
two women who smeared a nerve agent
on his face. The killing was assumed to
have been ordered by Kim Jong Un, his
half brother, in the interest of eliminat-
ing a potential rival. Adrian told Chris
that he had just received a call from Kim
Han Sol, who is believed to be Kim
Jong Nam’s eldest son. According to
Adrian, they were introduced in Paris,
around 2013, by a mutual contact. Han
Sol, who was wearing a pair of Gucci
shoes, told Adrian that he was aware of
his work with North Korea. The two