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Friends and colleagues who know about my activities with North Korean refugees often ask me: Aren't you afraid that the North Korean regime will target you?
My response? "Are you crazy? You really need to stop watching those spy thrillers and TV dramas." The idea that North Korea would send an agent to knock me off is laughable.
I'm not surprised. There are many people who think their government has enough agents to listen to their chit-chat phone calls, read their chatty emails or view ― and download ― their photos of their family pets. Yes, government agents listen, but probably 99 percent of people have nothing to worry about.
When friends see me in the news, they may think I am important enough for the North Korean regime to target me. Even if my activities caught the regime's attention, I still doubt that it would come after me. Why? I am confident that I am so far down the enemies list that by the time the agents got to my name, I would have already died ― of old age. The Korea Times webmaster uploading my column or the delivery man delivering The Korea Times with my column in it would get knocked off before I would.
I thought about this issue when I moderated a mini-conference on July 13 at which Kang Myeong-do spoke. In 1994, after he escaped from North Korea, he revealed secret details about the North Korean government's nuclear program. Kang has been criticizing the North Korean regime for at least two decades, yet he is healthy. When I meet with heavyweight critics of the regime ― Suzanne Scholte, Shin Dong-hyuk, Kang Chol-hwan ― I feel like an invisible man to the North Korean regime.
I recently visited one of the radio stations broadcasting via shortwave radio into North Korea. The president was with three bodyguards who protect him around the clock. I heard from one of his staffers that shortly before my visit, he had received a bloody t-shirt mailed from China, presumably from North Korean agents, with the message, "We will kill you and your family." He often receives faxes warning that the building will be blown up. If I told him that the North Korean government might target me, he might die ― from laughter.
Yes, I do realize there are real threats. Hwang Jang-yop, the architect of the Juche philosophy, was allegedly targeted for assassination after he defected to South Korea in 1997. He died in 2010 ― at the tender age of 87. There is the case of North Korean refugee Ri Han-yong (the nephew of Kim Jong-il's mistress Song Hye-rim) who was shot outside of his home in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province, in 1997. He had chronic debt problems, so it wasn't clear if he was an assassin's target (some suspected he was killed in retaliation for Hwang's defection) or had a brutal debt-collector.
They both had inside information that could embarrass or threaten the regime. My work mainly connecting volunteers with North Korean refugees and writing occasional articles wouldn't have me high on the list of targets.
After scoffing at this for two years, the threat came close to home, on May 1. Yeonmi Park, my colleague at Freedom Factory and co-host with me of "North Korea Today" on OTV, received a call from a South Korean police detective warning her that the North Korean regime had put her on a special target list. She was alarmed, yes, but I sensed that she was angrier at the reminder that she isn't really free, even though she escaped from North Korea seven years ago.
Joo Yang, another prominent North Korean refugee, recently featured me in a shortwave radio broadcast to North Korea. I was honored. But should I be alarmed? The North Korean regime has been threatening to blow up her station for years.
I've had friends and others who enjoy spy thrillers and conspiracy theories try to convince me that I am on North Korea's target list. Earlier this year, when I was added to an enemies list by Michael Malice in his book "Dear Reader," the warnings from friends and colleagues increased. My response: Why wouldn't the regime target Malice, the author of the book, instead of me? I was one of many names on the list ― on page 417 ― but his name is on the cover.
It is possible that the North Korean regime would look at Malice's list, and ask, "Who is this Casey Lartigue guy? Does anybody know? Perhaps we should send some agents because he must be really clever to have evaded our attention for this long." Oops. Can I get the Webmaster to delete this column and the newspaper delivery man not to deliver this edition of the newspaper?
The writer is the Director for Iinternational Relations at Freedom Factory Co. in Seoul and the Asia Outreach Fellow with the Atlas Network in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at cjl@post.harvard.edu.
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