This news makes me wonder if the intent behind the raid was to cause the Hanoi Summit to fail?:
Days before President Donald Trump was set to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam, a mysterious incident in Spain threatened to derail the entire high-stakes nuclear summit.
In broad daylight, masked assailants infiltrated North Korea’s Embassy in Madrid, restrained the staff with rope, stole computers and mobile phones, and fled in two luxury vehicles.The group behind the late February operation is known as Cheollima Civil Defense, a secretive dissident organization committed to overthrowing the Kim dynasty, people familiar with the planning and execution of the mission told The Washington Post.
The group’s alleged role in the attack has not previously been reported, and officials from the governments of North Korea, the United States, and Spain declined to comment on it.But in recent days, rumors have swirled about the motivations behind the attack in the Spanish media, including a report in El Pais alleging that two of the masked assailants have ties to the CIA.
People familiar with the incident say the group did not act in coordination with any governments. American intelligence agencies would have been especially reluctant to do so given the mission’s sensitive timing and brazen nature. But the raid represents the most ambitious operation to date for an obscure organization that seeks to undermine the North Korean regime and encourage mass defections, they say.
“This group is the first known resistance movement against North Korea, which makes its activities very newsworthy,” said Sung-Yoon Lee, a North Korea expert at Tufts University. [Washington Post]
You can read more at the link, but I would think there is going to be a covert war against the dissidents now by North Korea and their allies.
