A Marine veteran says he tried to help North Koreans in Spain defect. Now he faces the

‘No one could have ever imagined a case like this one.’ Those words from a federal judge describe the plight of Christopher Ahn, an American citizen, who has managed to get himself entangled in a web of intrigue involving the United States, Spain and North Korea.

Tonight, you’ll hear about fake kidnappings, political assassinations and dramatic rescues…and you’ll get a unique insight into North Korea – the world’s most isolated country.

There are almost as many questions as there are answers about this strange story…but one thing seems clear: Christopher Ahn is an endangered man

We met Christopher Ahn in Southern California, where the 43-year-old son of Korean immigrants was born and raised. Ahn joined the Marines at 19 and served in Fallujah…when he returned from Iraq, he got his MBA from the University of Virginia and co-founded a consulting business.

But seven years ago, the self described “do gooder” picked up an unusual hobby: helping North Korean diplomats defect.

Chris Ahn: I don’t think that I could morally look at myself in the mirror if I turned away from someone who was desperately asking for help.

Sharyn Alfonsi: How many North Koreans did you help defect?

Chris Ahn: I always try to lean on caution and not really talk about…

Sharyn Alfonsi: But is it a handful, dozens? Give us a sense of what we’re talking about. Or was this, you know, one or two and I’m out?

Chris Ahn: Um it’s more than one or two. And it’s less than dozens.

Ahn says he did it with a secretive, makeshift group of activists who called themselves Cheollima Civil Defense. They claim to have helped high-profile North Koreans defect.

Chris Ahn: There were whispers within the North Korean diplomatic community– about this strange organization that was out there, doing this.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Was it a loosely-formed group of people?

Chris Ahn: It was.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And how big are we talking about? 

Chris Ahn: I don’t even actually know the– the number

Cheollima’s grand mission was to overthrow the North Korean dictatorship — one of the most repressive regimes in the world.

The underground group was led by this man…. Adrian Hong – a Korean Mexican who held a U.S. green card. A Yale drop out, Hong became a human rights activist.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Adrian Hong has said he considers himself, “a freedom fighter who’s conducting a revolution.” Did you view yourself as a freedom fighter?

Chris Ahn: No. No. No. I..I..Obviously, Adrian has um his motivations to doing what he wants to do, but my motivation was just simply to bring some hope to people who were hopeless.

In the fall of 2018, Christopher Ahn was in Italy… when a Cheollima team reportedly arranged for North Korea’s acting ambassador and his wife to walk out of their embassy in Rome, jump into a waiting car and speed away to freedom. 

In February of 2019, Christopher Ahn flew to Spain for another secret operation.

Ahn says when he landed, he didn’t know the details, but suspected it had something to do with the North Korean embassy in Madrid. He went straight to this safe house…where he learned about the ambitious plan….Cheollima was going to help the entire North Korean embassy……an estimated 10 people…defect. 

Sharyn Alfonsi: How was the mission explained to you?

Chris Ahn: What I was told was that everyone in the embassy wanted to defect but were afraid to. And so our main point of contact in the embassy had asked us to stage a kidnapping so that there would be some type of plausible reason that all of a sudden, everyone in the embassy disappeared. Because the penalty for defecting is death, but not just for the defector. It’s death for everyone the defector knows, interacts with.

Sharyn Alfonsi: If you can make them look like victims, then their families in North Korea or their friends are not in jeopardy?

Chris Ahn: Correct.

Sharyn Alfonsi: At any point did you think, ‘This sounds a little bizarre? Like, this sounds crazy, what we’re doing here?’ Or did you think, ‘It’s a good idea?’

Chris Ahn: Of course it sounds crazy, (laugh) you know? But what the North Korean people go through is crazy.

Cheollima’s mission in Madrid would be its biggest yet: essentially to take over the North Korean embassy and fake a mass kidnapping. On February 22nd, around 4:30, Cheollima leader Adrian Hong, posing as a businessman, went to the front door.

Chris Ahn: He rings the doorbell. And he’s let in. Um and what I was told was that the door would be left open for us. And um the plan was that when we received a signal for us to walk into the embassy, and then begin the staged kidnapping.

Moments later, screen grabs from security cameras show other members of the Cheollima team, including Christopher Ahn, walking through the front door of the North Korean embassy.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Where was their security? Aren’t their version of Marines posted outside…

Chris Ahn: No…

Sharyn Alfonsi: There was no security outside the embassy…

Chris Ahn: There was no security. When you traditionally think of an embassy um, you think of like, um, you know, reinforced doors and guards and all these kinds of people. Their embassy is not that kind of an embassy. It’s a house with a driveway and, and a door that leads into their little compound.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Are you carrying a weapon? Are members of the group…

Chris Ahn: Oh, no. I was never carrying a weapon. But yes, there were weapons there. Um fake guns. So, you know, and who would bring fake guns into a, into a kidnapping, right?

Fake guns, for what he says was a fake kidnapping. Aware they were likely under surveillance, Ahn says embassy staff members were tied up and herded into a room where he- quietly- addressed them

Chris Ahn: ‘We’ve answered your call, and we’re here to, to help you defect.’

Sharyn Alfonsi: And how did they react to that?

Chris Ahn: It was disbelief. It was excitement. Someone said um, ‘Is this really happening?’ And that to me confirmed what I was told earlier that day, that everyone inside wanted to defect.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Describe what you saw when you went inside the embassy. What did it look like?

Chris Ahn: There was almost no furniture. It was bare. The walls were bare, except a few propaganda kinda posters. Um and so the whole place was very echoey. And I opened up the refrigerator and there was nothing in there. And immediately, I thought to myself, ‘These are the elites. These are the cream of the crop of North Korea. And they have nothing to eat in there.’

One hour into the operation, Ahn says the Cheollima team was on the verge of leaving the embassy with the North Koreans when everything changed.

Chris Ahn: There’s a ring at the door and everyone is very surprised by this. And I see that it’s the Spanish police. And I’m–that’s shocking. “What are they doing here?” I go back into the room with everybody and they asked me quietly. You know, ‘Who is at the door? Why is the doorbell ringing?’ So I said, ‘The police are at the door.’ And then you see the color on everyone’s face just turn to lily white. And they would whisper to me very terrified, and say that, ‘They know, they know, they know.’

As the police waited for someone to answer, Cheollima leader Adrian Hong put on a North Korean lapel pin to look like a diplomat – then opened the front door. The police informed Hong that a bloodied North Korean woman had frantically told them there was a problem inside the embassy…Hong replied nothing was wrong and shut the door….

Chris Ahn: I believe that was when um we realized that not everyone was accounted for.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Who was missing?

Chris Ahn: It was the wife of one of the members of the uh, of the embassy staff.

The wife had jumped off an embassy balcony in the early minutes of the incursion… despite an injured leg, she dragged herself onto the street where she was discovered by an alarmed Spanish motorist…

Chris Ahn: After the police left the phone all of a sudden started ringing, and ringing. It would ring, ring, ring, ring, wait ’bout five, ten seconds and ring, ring, ring, ring again for hours. And in that echoey house where the phone ringing, it’s just echoing everywhere, I don’t care how courageous you think you are, that is scary. And so it is totally and completely understandable why they would be afraid.

Sharyn Alfonsi: That they’d been caught?

Chris Ahn: Yes.

No one knew who was calling, but the fear was the North Korean government was now aware something was amiss inside its Madrid embassy…the acting ambassador, So Yun Sok, Cheollima’s main point of contact for the alleged mass defection, was inside the embassy and seemed spooked.

Chris Ahn: Adrian said ‘The main point of contact believes that this mission has been compromised, and that he’s too afraid to go.’ And so we need to get outta there. Our main point of contact there gives members of the group keys to the embassy vehicles. 

Just after 9 p.m., four and a half hours after it entered the embassy, the Cheollima team fled in the embassy vehicles. They ditched them all over Madrid. No one was caught. Christopher Ahn hailed a cab and went to Portugal, and eventually, back to the United States. 

Left behind at the embassy: knives, handcuffs, fake guns…and the shaken staff.

And now….. the North Korean acting ambassador, who supposedly asked for help defecting, told Spanish police the entire embassy staff had been held against their will and beaten.

Sharyn Alfonsi: At any point did you see anyone harm any members of the North Korean embassy…

Chris Ahn: Oh, never. I mean, it’s the exact opposite. I was a little concerned that it didn’t look real enough, because they were trying so hard to make sure that nobody got hurt.

Sharyn Alfonsi: The Spanish authorities say it was a kidnapping. What do you say?

Chris Ahn: Well, it means we did our job. We made it look real, and that was the point (laughs). We wanted it– to make it look real as possible, because we had to. We had no other choice. 

The Cheollima team took and later posted video of one of its members – not Christopher Ahn – smashing the photos of North Korean leaders inside the embassy…that raised more questions….as did the timing of the raid.

It happened five days before then President Trump met for a second time with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Hanoi. A meeting some human rights activists feared would “empower” the North Korean regime.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Was the intention of the operation to provoke Kim Jong Un?

Chris Ahn: I didn’t even know that that was happening. Again,

Sharyn Alfonsi: Come on. Everybody knew that was happening.

Chris Ahn: I mean, if you are a North Korea watcher or…

Sharyn Alfonsi: You are a North Korea watcher.

Chris Ahn: (laugh) I am not. I am not. I’m just a guy from L.A., you know

Sharyn Alfonsi: It seems like you would be aware of that, that this was in your orbit, that you cared what was going on. You’re a smart guy. This, the whole world is talking about these two leaders meeting. You didn’t know that was gonna happen?

Chris Ahn: So maybe I did, but, none of what I am doing is, is motivated by anything political or anything um bigger than the fact that I was asked to help these defectors defect.

Back in the U.S., Adrian Hong turned over computers and other digital data Cheollima took from the North Korean embassy to the FBI. Christopher Ahn says he also met with FBI agents at his apartment in LA.

Chris Ahn: We had a really friendly conversation. They asked me about my involvement, what happened. I tried to be as truthful as I could. You know, we ended the meeting with me asking, like, ‘Hey, is everything good, you know? Should I be concerned with anything?’ And their response was, ‘Oh, no, not at all. From our perspective, you were furthering American interests.

Sharyn Alfonsi: So you thought, ‘I’m good.’

Chris Ahn: Yeah.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And then what happened?

Chris Ahn: Well (sighs) about two, three weeks after that or so, one of the FBI agents called me and said that North Korea had discovered my identity, and that I needed to be vigilant. And that the only place in this world that I am safe is here in the United States.

Sharyn Alfonsi: The FBI has told you what about the threat?

Chris Ahn: The FBI has told me that my life is in danger. That the North Korean government is now, and will be, targeting me for assassination.

Christopher Ahn maintains when he and a group of human rights activists from Cheollima Civil Defense entered the North Korean embassy in Madrid in 2019, it was all theater…part of a botched “fake kidnapping” to help the North Korean embassy staff who wanted to defect. In the aftermath of the incursion, the FBI warned Ahn and Cheollima’s leader Adrian Hong that their lives were in danger.

Two months after the raid in Madrid, Christopher Ahn says he was carrying a gun for protection when he came here, to Adrian Hong’s LA apartment, to drop off security cameras…he was stunned to find U.S. Marshals inside.

Chris Ahn: I open the door and I walk in, and the marshals are in there. And I surprised them, they surprised me. You know, they put a gun to my head and said, like, ‘Don’t move or I’ll blow your brains out.’

Ahn says he was handcuffed and taken to jail for his role in the raid of the North Korean embassy in Madrid.

Sharyn Alfonsi: When you’re in jail, are you thinking, ‘This is a big misunderstanding, and surely I’ll be out any day?’ Or did you think, ‘This doesn’t look good?’

Chris Ahn: I thought I’d get bail, right, immediately. I don’t have a criminal record. I don’t think I even had a parking ticket in the last 15 years.

Christopher Ahn spent 87 days behind bars in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center…

Spain had issued international arrest warrants for him and seven other Cheollima activists, charging them with breaking and entering, illegal restraint and causing injuries…

Sharyn Alfonsi: Spain has said it’s a criminal organization. Was it a criminal organization, in your mind? 

Chris Ahn: I mean, unless it’s a crime to care, and it’s a crime to help…