North Korea raid group promises ‘bigger things’

A shadowy dissident group allegedly behind last month’s raid on North Korea’s embassy in Madrid promised “bigger things ahead” yesterday, but said they would temporarily suspend operations because of intense media scrutiny. The Cheollima Civil Defense (CCD) group emerged from the shadows this week to claim responsibility for a commando-style raid on Pyongyang’s embassy to highlight illicit activities rampant in North Korea’s foreign missions.

On Wednesday a Spanish court named Adrian Hong Chang, a Mexican national, as being the leader of the group which burst into the diplomatic mission and roughed up employees before fleeing with documents and computers. “We are a group of defectors who have come together with compatriots around the world,” the CCD said in a statement posted on its website. Various preparations to “shake the Kim Jong Un regime by the root” were underway, it added, but had been hampered by a spike in media interest.

“The activities of the members have been temporarily suspended,” it said, adding: “The media should refrain from sticking their nose in the nature of our group and our members. We have bigger things ahead of us.” The statement did not offer any clues about where the group was located, but said it was not collaborating with defectors in South Korea due to “strict security reasons”. Thursday’s statement was the first time the CCD had offered information on its membership since its emergence in 2017, when it posted an online video of the son of the North Korean leader’s assassinated brother, saying it had guaranteed his safety.

Analysts said the current media exposure could be both good and bad for the group’s future activities. “They can receive international support from anti-Pyongyang forces so it has created an atmosphere for them to do more open, public campaigning,” said An Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher in Seoul. But Shin Beom-cheol, a researcher at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies, said the group now faced possible reprisals from Pyongyang.

“If they set up an office in Southeast Asia or the US, it could in turn face an attack from North Korea,” he said. Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector and activist based in Seoul who claims knowledge of CCD, said most of its members were defectors settled in the US as American citizens.