Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining me again.
It seems like a lot of you enjoyed part two of my defection story,
so I decided to make part three.
As with parts one and two, this is the first time I’ve ever shared this story.
Please subscribe, and thank you for watching!
Last time, I told the story of my forced repatriation to North Korea,
and experience at the Ministry of State Security. Because I was a Kim Il Sung University graduate,
I was investigated as a political prisoner, and today I want to tell you about that process.
Truthfully, I was implicated in an incident that occurred in China,
so I was investigated first over there before I was sent back to North Korea.
There are sensitive parts to these stories that I’m omitting,
so suffice it to say that I was caught and sent back.
I could talk a lot about that process, too.
Anyway, I was sent to the Ministry of State Security and I was interrogated,
and I thought I was doing a good job of fooling the investigators
with the story I made up.
At that time, I was young.
At that time, I was young.
I thought I was smart enough to trick them.
But from the outset, they didn’t really believe anything I was saying.
They probably just thought,
“Ok, look, he’s slowly making up a story."
"A month after he told his story he was able to repeat it again verbatim."
"His IQ must be pretty good."
They were looking at me from a different perspective.
At that time,
there was something else that the Ministry of State Security was focusing its efforts on.
Back then, mass defection from North Korea was just starting,
and many personnel from the Agency for National Security Planning in South Korea
were operating in China.
Of course, this agency changed its names to the National Intelligence Service years ago,
but in North Korea, it’s still called the Agency for National Security Planning.
Since the late 1990s,
these agents have entered China to recruit talented defectors from North Korea.
It is said that defectors from the military, Ministry of State Security,
and the Special Operations Force,
as well as graduates from central universities
were all targeted as potential recruits
to an organization allegedly called the Azalea Group.
This is probably the first time you've heard of the Azalea Group.
This is sensitive information, so I have to use expressions
like, “it is said that” and “allegedly”.
In part, this is to protect myself against libel accusations down the line.
I can’t really prove or disprove the existence of a secret organization, can I?
Anyway, the organization was based out of a hotel in Yanji in Yanbian,
which I feel comfortable disclosing
because the Ministry of State Security already knew
which hotel it was at the time.
If a defector comes to this hotel
and is judged to have potential,
the new recruit is sent inland for six months
or a year of training and reeducation,
before they’re deployed on a spy mission to North Korea.
On the condition that you make some kind of contribution to their mission, they said they'd send you to South Korea,
but there was no way to go there at the time.
So these people were doing very dangerous things
just to able to get South Korean IDs,
and later on, many of them accused the organization of not keeping their promises.
I think this kind of story would make for a better movie
than “The Spy Gone North”.
Now defunct, I think the Azalea Group
would be great material for a film.
At that time, some members of the organization were in South Korea.
At any rate, that’s the background.
When I was being investigated by the Ministry of State Security,
the officers must have thought to themselves, “He's clearly a member of the Azalea Group.”
Of course, they mentioned absolutely nothing of it to me.
But even if I was a member of the Azalea Group,
why would I admit to it if they asked?
Even if I died, I would deny it, so they never asked me about it,
and just assumed that since I graduated from Kim Il Sung University,
I must be someone the Agency for National Security Planning was looking for.
On top of that,
the place I claimed to have lived while I was in China
was close to the Azalea training base,
so there’s no way they wouldn’t just immediately think,
"This is definitely a trained member of the group."
"If we release him, he'll definitely go back to them."
So that's how I wound up being used as bait as part of their strategy.
In prison, there was a spy of the same age as me,
and he always stuck by my side,
so we endured the difficult prison life together for a few months.
He was trying to gain my trust.
This guy would whisper in my ear constantly,
"Is there any way to get to South Korea?"
"My uncle is the president of Samsung."
"If you defect again, please take me with you."
He brainwashed me like this.
I assumed that because his uncle was at Samsung,
he had the connections to figure out how to get to South Korea,
but later I wound up taking him with me to China.
Actually, it wasn't easy for me
to escape the prison and defect again, but this is a long story,
so I’m going to skip it for now.
Anyway, I went to China with this man,
and we got through a lot of difficult times together.
I have enough stories about our experiences to fill a novel.
I was finally able to evade this spy,
and make it to South Korea,
and after confirming that I had indeed come here, he rang me up and confessed to me.
“I tried to gain your trust at the Ministry of State Security,
because I knew we defected together,
I could stake out the Azalea Group.”
I was released so that I would lead this spy straight to the Azalea Group's hideout.
I was used as bait.
I didn’t even know what the Azalea Group was at the time,
had no sense of this inside story,
and assumed that I just survived due to luck.
The truth is that I survived because the Ministry of State Security made a mistake,
and used me as part of their plot.
I guess in another way, their confusion was my good luck.
So that’s why it was no big deal
for the Ministry of State Security to let me go.
They wanted to sniff out the real headquarters of this group.
Their real mission
had been to find infiltrators in North Korea.
It's good that they failed. I’m sure there are lots of people like me who were used as decoys,
and were released just to face dangerous circumstances.
Even if one person had been caught, the mission would've been successful.
The high-ranking official in the Ministry of State Security
who conceived of this project has since died,
as well as the spy who followed me to China. He was taken back to prison later.
I have lots of dramatic stories like this,
things I suspect you haven't heard from other defectors before.
At that time, there was no route to South Korea,
no brokers, no sponsors.
At the beginning of the exodus of people out of North Korea,
I had to carve a path out for myself
not knowing what was going to happen.
Looking back, how many fateful moments were there
that led me to here?
While I stand by the decisions that I’ve made up until now,
I think that good fortune has helped more than anything.
Some invisible force has taken my mistakes
and turned them into blessings in disguise,
allowing me to safely reach South Korea.
After everything I've been through,
I'm now able to sit here and share it with all of you.
I think I’ve gotten through the main points of the story of the Azalea Group,
so I'll end here today.
Honestly, if it weren’t for the Azalea Group,
I would probably have just disappeared in a political prison camp,
and wouldn’t be alive now.
In this regard, I guess I should be thankful to the National Intelligence Agency.
Today I shared a lot of my experiences for the first time ever.
If you enjoyed this story, please subscribe if you haven't already!
Thank you for watching until the end.
