North Korea Escape Plan Could Send US Man To Jail
By the time Christopher Ahn signed on to the mission inside North Korea’s embassy in Madrid, the plan was already finalized. Other people had mapped out how to restrain the staff, how to hoover up any useful intel materials, and most important, how to make it look like the diplomat they were grabbing was being kidnapped rather than defecting — a fiction that would spare his relatives back home from brutal retribution.
The plan had been devised by members of Cheollima Civil Defense, a secretive group set up to help defectors from North Korea escape as part of a bigger plan to take down the Kim dynasty. But Ahn was no mercenary for hire. He was a volunteer who had pitched in on tamer missions by soothing the fears of would-be defectors worried about what might happen if they broke free. He had landed in Spain that very morning knowing nothing other than that the group needed his assistance.