In a 30-year career, Kim Kuk-song rose to the top ranks of North Korea's powerful spy agenciesIt has taken weeks of discussions to get an interview with him, and he's still worried about who might be listening. He wears dark glasses for the camera, and only two of our team know what we think is his real name.
He depicts a North Korean leadership desperate to make cash by any means possible, from drug deals to weapons sales in the Middle East and Africa. He told us about the strategy behind decisions being made in Pyongyang, the regime's attacks on South Korea, and claims that the secretive country's spy and cyber networks can reach around the world.
But the assassination attempt went wrong. Two North Korean army majors are still serving 10 year prison sentences in Seoul for the plot. Pyongyang always denied it was involved and claimed South Korea had staged the attempt."In North Korea, terrorism is a political tool that protects the highest dignity of Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un", he says. "It was a gift to demonstrate the successor's loyalty to his great leader.
"This kind of military work is designed and implemented by Kim Jong-un's special orders. It's an achievement."Mr Kim says one of his responsibilities in the North was developing strategies to deal with South Korea. The aim was "political subordination"."There are many cases where I directed spies to go to South Korea and performed operative missions through them. Many cases", he claims.
that far fewer people have been arrested in South Korea for spy-related offences since 2017, as the North turns to new technologies, rather than old fashioned spies, for intelligence gathering.previous high-profile defectors have warnedAccording to Mr Kim, the previous North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, ordered the training of new personnel in the 1980s "to prepare for cyberwarfare".
"The production of drugs in Kim Jong-il's North Korea peaked during the Arduous March," he says. "At that time, the Operational Department ran out of revolutionary funds for the Supreme Leader. North Korean weapons deals with Iran have been an open secret since the 1980s and even included ballistic missiles, according to Professor Andrei Lankov, one of the world's leading authorities on North Korea.
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