20. The Outcast Kingdom

20 THE OUTCAST KINGDOM

Against North Korea

1990s

After fourteen months of XXXXXX language lessons, plus a monthlong immersion, I looked forward to taking the family to an overseas tour in a peaceful, friendly nation. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX we were all eager to explore the country. Our family library included three volumes of XXXXXXXXXXXXX histories of the country, multiple tomes, and biographies of historic figures XXXXXXXXXXX

One day, shortly before our scheduled departure, the Chief of the East Asia Division called me into his office. When I sat down, he dropped a bomb on me.

“The Chief of the Koreas asked for you by name. He wants you to come work for him on a special project.”

I’d never met the Chief there, but his reputation was well known throughout the Agency. Hard-nosed, demanding—sometimes bordering on mayhem—he ran his station with an iron fist, which earned him the nickname “King Ralph.” He spoke two Asian languages—Chinese and Korean—and was highly educated and hyperintelligent.

This would be a big change XXXXXXXXXXX, especially after the past fourteen months. I couldn’t do that to the kids and Carmen XXXXXXXXXXX

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“Can you tell me about the program?” I asked the Division Chief.

“No, I can’t.”

“No information at all?” I asked, intrigued.

“No.”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

If he couldn’t explain the program to someone with my security clearance, I figured whatever this was had to be good.

It was.

King Ralph did not disappoint. His reputation was spot-on—a man harder than woodpecker lips, who squeezed the last ounce of effort out of everyone under his leadership. I arrived with my own reputation for being an ultra-aggressive case officer. The two of us quickly butted heads. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

XXXXXXXXXXX After a particularly salty email exchange, I confronted him and pushed back hard. It turned out, he respected that and eased up. Overnight, we went from constant conflict to working exceptionally well together. I suppose that was his way of testing me, seeing the mettle I possessed. Once I passed the test, we were solid. In the years to come, we became close friends.

In Korea, the Agency faced a unique challenge. The Cold War was over. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and the United States now reigned as the only global superpower left. Back home, Congress talked about a “peace dividend” and began to downsize the military and the defense industry. It seemed like a golden era was upon us, one in which we could trade freely with our overseas partners and enjoy a level of security our nation had not known since before the Great Depression.

Except, not.

North Korea in the 1990s was one of the strangest and most dangerous rogue nations history had ever seen. Born in the fires of World War II’s final days when the Soviets invaded Manchuria, North and South Korea declared themselves separate nations a few months apart in 1948. Two years later, North Korea invaded South Korea, intending to unite the peninsula under one Marxist dictator, Kim Il-sung. That invasion triggered UN involvement, led by the United States. In three years of horrific fighting, almost three million people died. North Korea was almost totally destroyed by the time the cease-fire took effect in 1953. Every building, road, bridge, and rail line had been bombed, shelled, or riddled with gunfire. It remained a desolate, impoverished nation thanks to Kim Il-sung’s bizarre and oppressive leadership.

It limped along, propped up by manipulated economic statistics, plus its Chinese and Soviet allies, whom Kim Il-sung sometimes set against each other to shake loose more aid from them. They obliged, since he was unafraid of confronting the Americans and South Koreans defending the other half of the peninsula. Through the next several decades, the North Koreans fought one of the bloodiest and most ruthless shadow wars in the world. They kidnapped average citizens in both South Korea and Japan, forcing them to teach their agents the cultural nuances of both countries. They were kept in appalling conditions for years until their usefulness had run its course. Reportedly, they were then brutally murdered.

North Korean operatives carried out political assassinations, bombings, and commando raids along the South Korean coast. Of its twenty-five million people, almost 40 percent served in the military or in the reserves. By the 1980s, this tiny, isolated nation possessed the fourth-largest army in the world behind China, Russia, and the United States. Kim Il-sung also developed a nuclear weapons program that looked to be on the verge of success by the mid-1990s.

Meanwhile, a series of floods combined with inept central management of its economy led to a famine. Thousands of North Koreans died every month of starvation; estimates later put the death toll at over four hundred thousand.

By the time I became involved in the Koreas, Kim Il-sung was in poor health. His son Kim Jong-il increasingly made decisions and was clearly the designated successor for when his father died. The North Koreans achieved something no other nation ever had: a hereditary Marxist monarchy, one that continues today.

In July 1994, Kim Il-sung finally died of heart failure. As expected, his son took over, declaring a three-year period of national mourning for his dad, even as the famine’s death toll mounted. What followed was a semi-thaw in relations with the South Koreans known as “the Sunshine Policy.” It proved short-lived. At the same time, Kim Jong-il implemented a “military first” policy that diverted food and other resources to the army. There was speculation that this was designed to discourage coup attempts, and Kim Jong-il may have been in a more precarious position politically than we’d first thought.

Operating against North Korea is not like it is portrayed in the movies. James Bond may be able to slip in and out of Pyongyang, but in the real world, that simply doesn’t happen. North Korea is the most locked-down police state on the planet. Every aspect of life there is controlled, including movement and travel. The entire environment is simply alien to anyone who grew up in a free nation.

Still, we found ways to counter some of the worst dark-world operations the North Koreans carried out. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXX I received a promotion to GS-15. We did some good.

On a global playing field, things were a little more even. As the North Korean economy collapsed through the 1990s, and the state became dependent on aid from China and the United Nations, it began using its overseas embassies as centers for criminal activity. The North Koreans would do anything to raise cash. They’d smuggle goods, run drugs, sell arms. Their cyber operations took root around this time, too, and in later years, they were quite successful in hacking into foreign banks and stealing money. By the late 1990s, these criminal operations formed their primary source of foreign currency outside of the aid they received from China.

North Korea is so broke that each embassy is not only expected to funnel currency home but to sustain itself as well through whatever criminal opportunities present themselves. They are essentially a country held together by a government-sanctioned criminal syndicate. There is nothing they won’t do. We’ve found their operatives neck-deep in human trafficking, prostitution, drugs, guns, and even counterfeiting. Of the latter, in the early 2000s, they created the most perfect counterfeit U.S. hundred-dollar bill ever seen. It was so impressive, the Secret Service named it the Super Note. The Super Note was so good that it forced the U.S. Mint to change the design of the bill.

Bottom line: for all their country’s many dysfunctions, North Korean operators excel in the sketchiest corners of the globe. I wonder if they note the irony that the most Marxist of the few remaining Marxist states survives by exploiting its talents in the most laissez-faire of marketplaces—the black one.

The North Koreans assigned to these embassies are chosen largely on their loyalty to the regime. Understandably, Pyongyang has always feared defections—I mean, let’s be honest: Who would actually want to live in such a place? So only the most ideologically committed members of the regime are sent to these foreign postings. As double insurance against defections, Pyongyang keeps at least one close family member back in North Korea as additional insurance. Basically, they are hostages, and the diplomats know that if they defect or are caught working for a foreign government, their people back home will die. Horribly. This makes them exceptionally difficult to penetrate or turn. On the rare occasion we had an opportunity to approach one of their embassy types, the results were usually the same: they’d tell us to go to hell.

Later on in my career, I got the chance to play hardball with these types. With the help of a veteran U.S. Army operator detailed to us, “K-B,” we dreamed up several schemes that I found myself in a position to personally carry out in spite of having recently been promoted to Senior Intelligence Service ranks—our equivalent of a general in the U.S. Army and Air Force. It gave me the opportunity to strike back against these thugs face-to-face, and I relished the chance.

By this point in my career, I served as one of King Ralph’s deputies. It was the highest “conventional” job I ever held at the CIA. It gave me responsibility for all of our worldwide programs targeting North Korea, as well as our robust liaison programs. I was also the Agency’s senior representative on Korean matters to the National Security Council (NSC) and its hard targets board. Hard targets for intelligence operations were plentiful, thanks to the Hermit Kingdom’s many tentacles. The job took me all over the world. In each case, we worked to counter the growing malignant criminal threat these North Korean embassies posed to their host nations.

For the most part, senior officers like me usually crewed a desk and let the younger guys do all the fieldwork. Besides, I had about 130 people working for me at the time. Managing them required most of my attention.

But I will always be my father’s son. He led by example, and I needed to do that, too. Plus, fieldwork was always where my heart lay. I couldn’t be chained to a windowless office forever. Instead, I took point on a couple of the schemes we cooked up. The key was again my ability to pose as something other than an American citizen. One idea in particular XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX raised eyebrows with the local Chief of Station, as it contained both a measure of danger and risk. He contacted King Ralph and asked, “How do you feel about this?”

“If Prado wants to do it, let him do it. I’ll back him,” came my boss’s reply.

With the green light, we went ahead with our operation. It was simple.

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The North Koreans smelled money. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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The deal was consummated, and a North Korean intelligence officer was assigned to be my contact. We worked out a time and place XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. But of course, when it did arrive, we’d coordinated with the local authorities to raid and capture the material—and the North Koreans with it. XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX

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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX This sort of black mark was looked upon very unfavorably in Pyongyang, so it probably would mean the end of his overseas career. At the very least. The NK regime made a habit of punishing failure with extreme measures.

As he was waiting at the airport for his flight out, I approached him.

“Remember me?” I asked.

He glowered.

“I can make your life really good right now,” I said. “You’ve been disgraced; your career is over. Why don’t you come with us? We’ll debrief you and you’ll make some good money.”

His face turned beet red as he realized he’d been played the entire time.

Sputtering with anger, he spat out, “Fuck you! I’m North Korean!”

Instead of a new start in America, he boarded the plane home, where he was consigned to the worst backwater posts in a country full of misery.

I slept like a baby that night.

Around this time, the collective American intel community discovered the North Koreans had just begun a new program that exploited legal and undocumented immigrants from Latin America and turned them into sleeper agents. They recruited them before they came to the United States using a combination of cash and coercion.

Those agents infiltrated into the United States, where the North Koreans used them sort of like first-world proxy shoppers. They bought high-tech items like computers and radios and sent them overseas, where they were smuggled to North Korea. This network, as it developed, proved to be yet another way around the economic and technology embargoes placed by so many nations against the Hermit Kingdom.

On a darker note, we also discovered that these agents served a dual purpose for their North Korean masters. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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XXXXXXX In one nation, we identified the North Korean intelligence officer.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX He was an ugly, squat, arrogant son of a bitch, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. We cooked up a scheme, and I told my people that’d I’d take point on it.

Using one of our local assets who was already in contact with the North Korean, we arranged an introduction XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I arrived at our meeting point carrying a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black in one hand, a briefcase in the other.

Little did he know that the meeting location was wired and under surveillance. We had cameras secreted inside the room to capture all the action.

We sat down and started talking. He kept eyeing my briefcase. I made not-so-subtle references that conveyed to my pudgy mark that the “goods” inside were of exceptional value to his country. We knocked back a double Johnnie Walker. Then another. One thing about North Koreans—they are heavy drinkers. This guy was in his midsixties and in poor health; his liver was probably already on the way out.

We’d finished a third round. The bottle was almost empty. He was excited and jovial—as jovial as North Koreans get; they’re usually pretty sour humans.

He’d lowered his guard. I could see in his eyes that his mind was racing with thoughts of promotions and accolades in his future. It was time to spring the trap.

“You know what I have here,” I said. I put my left hand on the briefcase and slid it across the table toward him. Then I reached over and clasped his hand with my right.

He took my hand, and we shook. His eyes lit up. I said to him again, “You know what I have here.”

He nodded and smiled.

I flipped the briefcase latch. The lip popped open just as I said, “Thank you for working with the United States government.”

It took a second for him to process what I’d just said. Then he glanced down at the briefcase’s contents. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX his eyes fell on stacks and stacks of cash.

“Thank you for agreeing to work with me in helping the U.S. to overthrow the corrupt North Korean government.”

He tried to yank his hand away. I was far stronger and held on to him. Panic seized him. He recoiled. I yanked him close.

Eye to eye, six inches apart, I said to him, “Either you work with me, or I’ll destroy you.”

My measured, controlled words sank in. He’d been totally conned. A single photo of him shaking hands with me with a backdrop of a cash-filled briefcase was enough to earn him a ticket to a North Korean gulag if the wrong people were to see it.

I let go of him. He slumped back into his chair, sweating and tugging at his shirt. I stared at him. “Think it over.”

He refused to work with us. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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The night I learned that news, I went home and cracked a bottle of champagne. I sat in our backyard and drank it, enjoying the moment. In a world filled with dirtbags and murderers who want to do harm to Americans, sometimes you have to play hardball. I was okay with that, especially when the good guys win and a dirtbag gets his due.

Don’t fuck with my country.