Espionage

Many assume that North Korea was an ally of the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. But in fact relations were never easy between the two, particularly after the late 1950s. There was a great deal of mutual mistrust beneath the thin veneer of friendship rhetoric.

So it is hardly surprising that North Korean intelligence operatives were remarkably active in the Soviet Union from the early 1960s, hunting for technological secrets and new weapons designs that they could not obtain legally.

Only a few glimpses of the spy wars of the period have emerged so far — largely because all relevant archives in both countries have remained classified.

But in 2019, Ukrainian journalist Edward Andryushchenko investigated a curious spy case that happened in Kiev in the 1970s, taking advantage of Ukraine’s disinterest in keeping KGB secrets.

His findings, which have gone almost entirely uncovered in international media, shine a light on the covert espionage struggle between the USSR and DPRK.

SNAKE OIL FOR STATE SECRETS?

The only foreign spy who the KGB counterintelligence department apprehended in all of Ukraine in 1980 was working for the Soviet Union’s North Korean “allies.” His name was Stanislav Pushkar.

Pushkar was probably an ideal asset for a hostile intelligence service. He majored in engineering at a good college, but could not graduate and left. He was divorced, liked money, was smart and worked at the Arsenal-2 weapons factory.

From 1962, this factory specialized in repairing and servicing missile systems, including anti-tank guided missiles (ATG Ms) and associated equipment. A group of young North Korean military officers arrived at the factory in 1970 to study how to service ATG Ms that the Soviet Union deemed suitable for export to its unreliable ally.

Pushkar was officially responsible for handling the foreign visitors. The North Koreans sometimes dropped by his house or invited him to restaurants. They showered him with presents, including ginseng products and snake liquor.

Shortly before their departure, the friendly officers asked Pushkar to make copies of the classified manuals related to the Falanga ATGM system, both the launcher vehicle and missiles. He accepted this proposal, so they gave him a small Swiss-made camera to take snapshots of the classified manuals. They also provided him with Moscow phone numbers for contacts and a small amount of money.

The first mission was a partial success. Pushkar could not get access to the Falanga launcher vehicle manual, but he still managed to get the manual for the missile the system used. He smuggled the secret document from the Arsenal-2 library, brought it home and took pictures.

From that time, Pushkar, then in his early 30s, became a North Korean spy operating under the code name “Tonghyangin,” or “our village person.”

The North Korean agents took their time to get the film, which was delivered to them in Moscow in late 1971. For his efforts, Pushkwar received 500 rubles — a reasonable amount of money, equal to four average monthly salaries in the Soviet Union of the period. But one has to keep in mind that Pushkar’s own monthly salary was 300 rubles — as a skilled technician at a weapons factory, he was well-paid.

Andryushchenko suspects the reason Pushkar was eager to steal secrets for Pyongyang was that the North Koreans rewarded their asset not only with money but also with gifts of ginseng, which was tremendously popular in the Soviet Union and was seen as a miracle herbal drug at the time. Pushkar’s mother was sick, and he believed the ginseng was helping to keep her alive.

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS

Pushkar’s spycraft continued in 1972, when the North Koreans asked him to get intel about the RPK-1 “Vaza” anti-aircraft radar system, which was also serviced at his factory but in a different section.

Pushkar himself had no access to the necessary documents, so he introduced the North Koreans to another technician, named Naumov. At first, Naumov showed little enthusiasm for his mission, but he eventually provided them with some materials they were looking for. Naumov and Pushkar sometimes worked together, sometimes separately.

Throughout 1973-1975, Pushkar provided the North Korean spies with a great amount of intelligence on the Soviet missiles, especially the ATGM systems. He even went beyond photocopying secret manuals and writing out weapons system schemes and began to steal spare factory parts and weapons components.

The KGB began to harbor suspicions about Pushkar in late 1971. They kept the North Korean officers under surveillance, acting on the correct assumption that these people would always be eager to get Soviet secrets.

In one case, KGB agents conducted a secret search of the North Korean officers’ rooms and, among other things, discovered a memo with Pushkar’s address as well as a short note about his personal features and code name.

The KGB actually approached the technician Naumov before Pushkar ever introduced him to the North Koreans. He agreed to assist with counterintelligence and, following the KGB’s instruction, kept delaying the delivery of the promised materials to the North Koreans as long as possible.

The initial plan was to keep Pushkar under surveillance and then either arrest him or his North Korean controllers, or else recruit him to learn more about the scale of the undercover North Korean network operating against the Soviet military industry.

Things did not work as intended. During a 1975 trip to Moscow to deliver stolen material, Pushkar discovered that he was being followed. Uncertain whether this was due to his espionage activities or a separate, incidental involvement in a scandal with a high-ranking Moscow official, he decided to break with the North Koreans.

The KGB decided not to prosecute Pushkar, who changed his job in 1977 and began to work at a different factory that had nothing to do with the military industry or state secrets. Nobody wanted a scandal when the spy had seemingly ceased to be a danger.

PUSHKAR ARRESTED

The situation changed just two years later when the North Koreans tried to reestablish contact with their sleeper agent. This time, they were interested in night vision equipment and rangefinders.

The KGB, having learned about these plans through a double agent in the North Korean spy network in Moscow, decided to act.

A Soviet agent approached Pushkar in Kiev and gave him instructions allegedly sent by the DPRK embassy — the instructions were real, but the messenger was not. Pushkar agreed to provide what the North Koreans asked for, using his contacts among workers and technicians at military plants in Kiev.

Pushkar was finally arrested in December 1980. A closed court session sentenced him to ten years in prison, where he would die sometime that decade.

In 1987, when the Arsenal-2 factory decided to sue Pushkar for compensation for the weapons components he had stolen, the prison administration replied that the prisoner had died. The circumstances of his death are unknown.

A FORGOTTEN SPY WAR

A few years ago a Russian newspaper published a lengthy interview with a former KGB officer responsible for countering North Korean espionage in Asia. He told stories that show the remarkable ingenuity of North Korean intelligence operatives.

In one case, they included a professional draftsman on a team that visited industrial centers: They knew they would be prevented from taking pictures, so they relied on professionally made sketches of the equipment.

In another case, the KGB noted an unusual number of coffins shipped back home from a North Korean loggers’ camp near Khabarovsk. The number significantly exceeded the number of dead, so there was little doubt that the North Koreans used the coffins to smuggle something.

Many more stories will likely surface. North Korean intel services were quite active in the USSR.

They were interested, above all, in weapons systems (especially missiles of all kinds), but also in technologies that would be useful in mining and steel production.

They also conducted influence operations, tried to create clandestine pro-Pyongyang groups among Soviet Koreans and hunted the North Korean emigrants who were given asylum in the USSR.

We may have to wait for decades before we will get a reasonably full picture of that forgotten spy war.

Spanish authorities have not sought the extradition of any South Korean nationals involved in the 2019 raid of the North Korean Embassy in Madrid, a June-dated court document seen by NK News shows.

That’s despite Madrid’s ongoing efforts to extradite several U.S. nationals involved in the case, including former U.S. marine Christopher Ahn, who has for months been fighting extradition on the basis that he could face a high risk of a revenge killing by North Korean agents should he leave the United States.

“It is reported that Spain has not sent any extradition request to South Korea, either in the context of the procedure docket … or in any other case,” a June 1-dated note to the U.S. Department of Justice from the Liason Magistrate of Spain to the United States reads.

That chimes with what South Korean authorities told NK News in July 2019, shortly after Madrid’s extradition requests to the U.S. had been approved.

It’s not certain what prompted the Spanish Liason Magistrate to write the letter to the federal court currently overseeing Ahn’s extradition case, but a supporter of Ahn told NK News earlier this week that Madrid had made efforts to extradite South Koreans involved in the raid.

“I learned in court that South Korea has denied Spain’s extradition request regarding ROK citizens implicated in the Feb. 22, 2019 Madrid incident for lack of evidence,” Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor at Tufts University, told NK News on June 7.

Of the ten individuals involved in the Feb. 2019 raid, a Spanish National Court judge in Mar. 2019 named at least one from South Korea as being involved: Woo Ran-lee. A Sept. 2019 news report stated that a warrant had been issued for Woo’s arrest, citing unnamed Spanish National Court sources.

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