American Defector Helped North Korea Train Agents for Terrorist Attacks Within the US
Here is an interesting report that says that North Korea was training agents to conduct terrorist attacks within the United States according to Bill Gertz in the Washington Free Beacon:
North Korea dispatched covert commando teams to the United States in the 1990s to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in a conflict, according to a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report.
The DIA report, dated Sept. 13, 2004, reveals that five units of covert commandos were trained for the attacks inside the country.
According to the report, the “Reconnaissance Bureau, North Korea, had agents in place to attack American nuclear power plants.”
The document states that the North Korean Ministry of People’s Armed Forces, the ministry in charge of the military, “established five liaison offices in the early 1990s, to train and infiltrate operatives into the United States to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in case of hostilities.”
“One of the driving forces behind the establishment of the units and infiltration of operatives was the slow progress in developing a multi-stage ballistic missile.” [Washington Free Beacon]
You can read more at the link, to include the comments from a ROK Drop favorite and Korean War historian Mark Sauter on this issue. Gertz’s information is based on heavily redacted documents that Mark Sauter was able to uncover through Freedom of Information Act requests. Here is probably the most interesting passage from these documents:
North Korea’s interest in training its agents about Americans is supported by many other reports, including the one below about an alleged U.S. citizen known as “Jackson” who instructed North Korean special forces operatives in “U.S. Special Forces tactics, American English, and interrogation techniques” from before 1983 to at least 1993. The American, called “Comrade Ch’ang-sik” in Korean and said to be a U.S. Air Force POW, trained members of the 52nd Seaborne Sniper Battalion. He was reported to be the chief of psychological operations study at the Reconnaissance Bureau’s Madonghui College.* [DMZ War]
Here is a copy of the redacted report about this American:
What is really interesting about this is that the EC-121 shootdown occurred over the Sea of Japan. Some wreckage from the crash along with two bodies were recovered on the Sea of Japan.
So the picture the source saw could not have been the EC-121. Maybe it was just a picture from the Korean War years that people mistook for the EC-121? Looking at his estimated age of “Jackson” he would be too young to be a Korean War POW and I have never heard of an Air Force officer being taken hostage or defecting across the DMZ. So who is this guy? Mark Sauter believes it may be US Army defector Jerry Parrish:
However, if the “Jackson report” above is accurate, it may be even more likely that “Jackson” was one of the five U.S. Army defectors to North Korea during the Cold War. These men were sometimes described as “POWs” by escapees from North Korea and some of “Jackson’s” characteristics match defector Jerry Wayne Parrish, now dead. [DMZ War]
Specialist Jerry Parrish defected to North Korea in 1963 while on patrol along the DMZ. Here is a picture of Parrish while in North Korea:
If the mysterious “Jackson” is Parrish it seems what US Special Forces knowledge he was teaching was not from personal experience. This leads me to believe his main job was teaching English like the other US defectors did. Anyway this is just another interesting chapter of the ongoing conflict with North Korea that these declassified documents are slowly shining a light on.
