Worthy Christian News > World News > US, South Korea Fail To Kill North Korea Leader, Plot Details Show

US, South Korea Fail To Kill North Korea Leader, Plot Details Show

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

PYONGYANG/WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – American and South Korean intelligence agencies supported a plot to “assassinate” North Korea’s strongman Kim Jong-un with a “biochemical weapon, several sources close to the failed plan say.

The plan to kill the North Korean leader was set to echo the death of Kim’s half-brother with a nerve agent just months earlier.

It was even joked about by Kim when he spoke with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director months later. CIA chief Mike Pompeo met with the North Korean leader two months before Kim and then President Donald J. Trump’s notorious and historic 2018 summit.

Kim reportedly greeted his guest: “Mr Director, I didn’t think you’d show up. I know you’ve been trying to kill me.” To which Mr Pompeo joked: “Mr Chairman, I’m still trying to kill you.”

The Daily Beast news website said it learned that Kim wasn’t joking. It cited a source close to an assassination plot as saying there was an active plan “to topple the Kim regime.”

A former officer at South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) confirmed that the agency was providing financial backing for a plan that would have shocked the world. North Korea believed the CIA was also part of the plot.

PLOT LEADER

The team of would-be Kim-killers reportedly hatched their plot not only in Pyongyang but in Russia, where they could more easily obtain arms and hoped to avoid the intense scrutiny of Kim’s elite bodyguards.

Doh Hee-Youn, CEO of the Citizens Commission for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees, was reportedly involved in the plot in North Korea. Doh spoke daily with plot leader Kim Seong-il, who was based in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk in Russia, according to sources monitored by Worthy News.

Doh told The Daily Beast: “For two or three years, I had conversations with Kim Seong-il, whose intent was to topple the Kim regime.”

The plan was reportedly shared on secret computer sticks and passed around inside Kim’s inner circle, who were apparently ready to kill Kim.

Kim Seong-il was well aware of the hazards of his plot. Doh recalled him saying: “In revolution, there are always sacrifices. We knew it could be dangerous. Someone had to risk what we were going to do.”

“For two or three years, I had conversations” with Kim Seong-il, whose “intent was to topple the Kim regime,” Doh recalled. Seong-il initiated the relationship, said Doh, by getting in touch with him after hearing him on short-wave radio reports by South Korea’s Korean Broadcasting System.

RUSSIAN PHONES

As a trusted manager with his small office, Kim could speak on Russian mobile phones without fear of eavesdropping.

Yet the alleged plot failed, and Kim Jong-Un was ready to tell the world he was still alive. The North posted a 23-minute video online in May 2017 boasting that the plotters, including Kim Seong-il, had been rounded up.

Seong-il, clearly tortured, claimed to be funded by the NIS. In the video, he detailed “a plot to assassinate the supreme leader with a biological toxin or polonium.” It was the same radioactive substance that killed Russia’s former KGB secret service spy, Alexander Litvinenko, in London in 2006.

The NIS allegedly sent funds four times—first $20,000, $10,000, and then two tranches of $50,000 to finance the plot.

The film, posted briefly online, was meant as a warning to Seoul and Washington. It was shared with South Korean or foreign media so as not to inspire other North Koreans to “kill their hated leader,” sources said.

The video did not refer to Kim Jong-Un by name, but instead that “the supreme leader” was the target while citing “evidence that the CIA and NIS have plotted terrorism.”

‘US PLOT’

However, a separate statement by the state-run Korean Central News Agency also claimed North Korea foiled a U.S.-backed attempt to depose Kim in May 2017.

It said: “A group of heinous terrorists who infiltrated into our country on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency of the U.S. and the South Korean puppet Intelligence Service to carry out state-sponsored terrorism against our supreme headquarters using biological and chemical substance were caught and exposed. This palpably shows the true nature of the US as the main culprit behind terrorism.”

The Ministry of State Security claimed a North Korean known only as “Kim” was paid to attack with biochemical substances but was caught. The suspect’s fate was not reported.

However, sources with close knowledge about dictator Kim’s thinking fear that those involved in the plot “were cut in pieces and fed to dogs,” as happened in previous cases.

A year after the plot was foiled, Kim welcomed Pompeo to Pyongyang for preparations ahead of the Trump summit, to be held in Singapore in June 2018.

Since then, the suffering continued for many deemed dangerous to the “Kim regime,” including devoted Christians, according to several sources with close knowledge about the situation. Thousands of Christians and perceived political opponents have been held in notorious prison camps where they face torture and death.

Pompeo’s memoir contains harsh criticisms of Kim Jong-un. He described him as “a small, sweaty, evil man who used every bit of his charm to try to change the awkward mood, but his actions were befitting a murderer.”