Anti-North Korean Terrorists
Straight out of a Movie
One of the biggest stories of the month that has gotten nowhere near the amount of media coverage it deserves is something straight out a James Bond movie: a mysterious raid on the North Korean embassy in Madrid that seemed to come out of nowhere.
“Members of a North Korean dissident group held staff at Pyongyang’s embassy in Madrid hostage in late February as they tried to persuade a senior official to defect, before escaping with computers and documents, according to a person familiar with the incident and a Spanish court account.”
The following description of the raid is particularly dramatic: “the assailants tied up the embassy staff with rope, put hoods over their heads and asked them questions. They spoke in Korean and appeared to be Asian. More than an hour into the raid, a woman reportedly escaped, and her screams for help alerted a neighbor, who contacted police. When authorities arrived at the embassy, a man opened the door and told them there was no problem. Moments later, the embassy gates opened, and the assailants dashed out to two embassy cars and sped away, according to local reports. The vehicles were found abandoned on a nearby street.”
In the wake of the incident, theories swirled around the identity of the assailants and their motives. Some believed the operation had CIA or FBI ties, while myself and many others just felt like readers of a mystery novel who were completely lost. The group was later identified as the Cheollima Civil Defense, a group of North Korean dissidents who are trying to bring down the Kim regime. My first instinct upon hearing of the story and learning of the Cheollima Civil Defense was to connect this with fictional shadowy dissident groups that conducted secret operations to bring down a larger regime — namely, I thought of Morpheus's Crew in The Matrix and Hydra in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Beyond the stellar theatrical quality of the story, there is an important issue of note. Today, North Korea described the incident at its embassy a “grave terrorist attack” and said that "this kind of act should never be tolerated around the globe."
“Members of a North Korean dissident group held staff at Pyongyang’s embassy in Madrid hostage in late February as they tried to persuade a senior official to defect, before escaping with computers and documents, according to a person familiar with the incident and a Spanish court account.”
The following description of the raid is particularly dramatic: “the assailants tied up the embassy staff with rope, put hoods over their heads and asked them questions. They spoke in Korean and appeared to be Asian. More than an hour into the raid, a woman reportedly escaped, and her screams for help alerted a neighbor, who contacted police. When authorities arrived at the embassy, a man opened the door and told them there was no problem. Moments later, the embassy gates opened, and the assailants dashed out to two embassy cars and sped away, according to local reports. The vehicles were found abandoned on a nearby street.”
In the wake of the incident, theories swirled around the identity of the assailants and their motives. Some believed the operation had CIA or FBI ties, while myself and many others just felt like readers of a mystery novel who were completely lost. The group was later identified as the Cheollima Civil Defense, a group of North Korean dissidents who are trying to bring down the Kim regime. My first instinct upon hearing of the story and learning of the Cheollima Civil Defense was to connect this with fictional shadowy dissident groups that conducted secret operations to bring down a larger regime — namely, I thought of Morpheus's Crew in The Matrix and Hydra in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Beyond the stellar theatrical quality of the story, there is an important issue of note. Today, North Korea described the incident at its embassy a “grave terrorist attack” and said that "this kind of act should never be tolerated around the globe."
Let's analyze North Korea's statements. Is this an act of terrorism that "should never be tolerated around the globe?" A 2004 Secretary-General of the United Nations report described terrorism as any act "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act." Clearly, this act indeed was intended to cause bodily harm to civilians (the people at the North Korean embassy) and had the purpose of intimidating a government (North Korea's) to do or abstain from doing any act (do: persuading a senior official to defect; abstain from doing: Kim continuing to rule North Korea).
Indeed, we can classify this as an act of terrorism. A violent raid on any country's embassy by a shadowy group "should never be tolerated around the globe." But we must also remind ourselves that the target matters. North Korea is a totalitarian state with an atrocious human rights record. And the George Washington and Samuel Adams and other founders of the United States would have also been considered terrorists by the United Kingdom.
The line between international law and just action is blurred. As a general rule, the world should not tolerate terrorist attacks on government embassies. But it is not completely unjustified to actively resist a tyrannical regime. Social contract theory might help here. Perhaps we should consult Locke and Rousseau for advice.
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