THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER23, 2020 53
an hour, Adrian called and told Chris
that the network was negotiating with
three countries to accept Han Sol and
his family.
Chris tried to distract Han Sol by
talking about American food. He de-
scribed American barbecue, and how
cooking techniques from different areas
produced distinct flavors. Then he asked
Han Sol, “Yo, it’s a bit wild you are from
North Korea—what was it
like?” Han Sol talked about
going fishing with his grand-
father. The story sounded
cozy and intimate—then
Chris remembered that Han
Sol was talking about Kim
Jong Il, the former Great
Leader of North Korea.
Late that evening, Adrian
called Chris to say that a
country had agreed to take
in Han Sol’s family, and that he had
bought three plane tickets to Schiphol
Airport, outside Amsterdam. By then,
they had been in the Taipei airport for
some eighteen hours.
At the gate, Chris escorted the fam-
ily through the line and handed the gate
agent their tickets and passports. When
the agent checked their passports, he
reacted with surprise, and then said
firmly, “No, they are not getting on. They
are too late.” (Since Kim Jong Nam had
been killed earlier that week, at another
airport in the region, it’s possible that
their passports raised an alarm.) Chris
looked at the line and said, “But there are
people still boarding.” The man began
yelling, “They are not getting on!” Chris
called Adrian and put him on speaker-
phone, so that he could hear the con-
versation. The man then said, “You know
exactly why they cannot get on.”
Chris and the family retreated to the
lounge. A few hours later, two men who
identified themselves as C.I.A. officers
showed up—a Korean American named
Wes and an older white man. One of
them noticed Chris’s memorial bracelet
from the Iraq War. Chris told them that
he was a veteran, adding, “I love my coun-
try, but I am not in the U.S. right now,
nor did I break any law. I don’t need to
talk to you.” They asked to speak to
Han Sol. Chris told Han Sol, “I don’t
think you should talk to anybody until
we understand what is going on.” (The
C.I.A. declined to comment.)men kept in touch. Adrian told me,
“Never met a kid with so much money.
Kim Jong Nam had stashed away a lot
of cash during his life.” Immediately
after his father’s death, Han Sol noticed
that the Macau police who typically
guarded his house had disappeared.
He called the mutual contact to tell
Adrian that he, along with his mother
and his sister, needed to get out of Macau
as soon as possible. It was easy to see
why Han Sol would be of interest to
various countries and their intelligence
services. Considered by some to be the
rightful heir of the former Great Leader,
Han Sol represented valuable leverage
to whoever captured him, dead or alive—
Adrian called this a “zero-sum game.”
Adrian, who was in the U.S., asked
Chris, “Can you go meet them at the
airport in Taiwan tonight, and make
sure that no one is following them?”
Chris threw some clothes in his back-
pack and headed to the airport. It was
after midnight when he arrived in Tai-
pei. He had Han Sol’s flight number,
and he found a small noodle stand by
the gate, where Han Sol and his fam-
ily could sit while he scanned the crowd
for threats.
The family arrived early that morn-
ing, wearing sanitary masks to cover their
faces, which wasn’t unusual in Asia even
then. Han Sol was about five feet ten
inches tall, wearing a long-sleeved shirt
and a coat, and rolling a suitcase. His
mother was a pretty middle-aged woman,
who reminded Chris of his own mother.
Han Sol’s sister, who was wearing jeans,
looked to be in her late teens. Adrian
had told the family that Chris would be
wearing a black T-shirt and a Dodgers
cap and would answer to the name Steve.
Han Sol spotted Chris and said, “Steve?”
Chris nodded and said, “Let’s go.”
Chris spoke to Han Sol and his sis-
ter in English, and to their mother
in Korean. When Han Sol’s mother
asked what would happen to them,
Han Sol said, “I trust him”—pointing
at Chris—“because I trust Adrian.”
Chris then brought the family to an
airport lounge that had private rooms.
Chris put Han Sol’s mother and sister
in one room, giving them his iPad and
opening Netflix. The sister, who spoke
fluent English, reminded him of a typ-
ical American teen-ager. Chris and Han
Sol sat in a neighboring room. After
The next morning, airport agents ar-
rived. They were markedly more friendly,
and helped Chris book new tickets to
Amsterdam.
Han Sol seemed relieved. But Wes
had told Chris that he would be ac-
companying the family on the flight.
This worried Chris. Before they parted,
Chris, on Adrian’s instructions, used his
phone to film Han Sol thanking him and
Adrian for insuring his
safety. (On the Web site of
Cheollima Civil Defense,
the group thanked Lody
Embrechts, then the Dutch
Ambassador to both Ko-
reas, who had approved Han
Sol’s transit and promised
to help his family. Em-
brechts refused to comment
for this article.) They also
took a selfie together. “It was
an insurance policy,” Chris told me. “To
prove we were not kidnapping Han Sol.”
The video also proved that, days after
his father’s assassination, Han Sol was
alive. Three weeks later, the video was
uploaded to YouTube, and the world
learned of the existence of Han Sol, and
of Cheollima Civil Defense.
At the gate, Han Sol gave Chris a
hug, and boarded the flight.
A team sent by Free Joseon, assisted
by a Dutch human-rights lawyer, was
waiting at the gate at Schiphol. Em-
brechts was on hand to facilitate the
entry of Han Sol and his family into
the Netherlands. Yet they never came
through the gate.
Adrian told me that Han Sol had
called him to say that he had tried to
exit through the gate but had been taken
through a side door to a hotel in the
airport. Adrian asked Han Sol if he
wanted to seek refuge in the Nether-
lands. Han Sol confirmed his desire, so
Adrian told the Free Joseon members
and the lawyer to go to the lobby of the
hotel, and Han Sol would come down-
stairs. Han Sol never showed up.
Multiple sources told me that the
C.I.A. took Han Sol and his family else-
where, though it is unclear if the loca-
tion is in the Netherlands or another
country altogether. “Governments are
rarely unified in efforts,” a member of
the team sent by Free Joseon told me.
“This was one of those moments that a
foreign ministry and the secret services