By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

US Navy SEALs killed several North Korean fishermen

A group of Navy SEALs emerged from the ink-black ocean on a winter night in early 2019 and crept to a rocky shore in North Korea. They were on a top-secret mission so complex and consequential that everything had to go exactly right.

The objective was to plant an electronic device that would let the United States intercept the communications of North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-un, amid high-level nuclear talks with President Trump.

The mission had the potential to provide the United States with a stream of valuable intelligence. But it meant putting American commandos on North Korean soil, a move that, if detected, not only could sink negotiations but also could lead to a hostage crisis or an escalating conflict with a nuclear-armed foe.

It was so risky that it required the president’s direct approval.

For the operation, the military chose SEAL Team 6’s Red Squadron, the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden. The SEALs rehearsed for months, aware that every move needed to be perfect. But when they reached what they thought was a deserted shore that night, wearing black wet suits and night-vision goggles, the mission swiftly unraveled.

A North Korean boat appeared out of the dark. Flashlights from the bow swept over the water. Fearing that they had been spotted, the SEALs opened fire. Within seconds, everyone on the North Korean boat was dead.

The SEALs retreated into the sea without planting the listening device.

The 2019 operation has never been publicly acknowledged, or even hinted at, by the United States or North Korea. The details remain classified and are being reported here for the first time. The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress who oversee intelligence operations, before or after the mission. The lack of notification may have violated the law.

The White House declined to comment.

This account is based on interviews with two dozen people, including civilian government officials, members of the first Trump administration and current and former military personnel with knowledge of the mission. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the mission’s classified status.

Several of those people said they were discussing details about the mission because they were concerned that Special Operations failures are often hidden by government secrecy. If the public and policymakers become aware only of high-profile successes, such as the raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan, they may underestimate the extreme risks that American forces undertake.

The military operation on North Korean soil, close to American military bases in South Korea and the Pacific region, also risked setting off a broader conflict with a hostile, nuclear-armed and highly militarized adversary.

Members of the US Navy SEAL Team 18 celebrate after a demonstration of combat skills at the National Navy.

It is unclear how much North Korea was able to discover about the mission. But the SEAL operation is one chapter in a decades-long effort by U.S. administrations to engage North Korea and constrain its nuclear weapons programs. Almost nothing the United States has tried — neither promises of closer relations nor the pressure of sanctions, has worked.

In 2019, Trump was making a personalized overture to Kim, in search of a breakthrough that had eluded prior presidents. But those talks collapsed, and North Korea’s nuclear program accelerated. The U.S. government estimates that North Korea now has roughly 50 nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach the West Coast. Kim has pledged to keep expanding his nuclear program “exponentially” to deter what he calls U.S. provocations.

The U.S. Navy’s special forces infiltrated North Korean territorial waters in 2019, during the first term of the Donald Trump administration, to carry out a surveillance operation targeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but failed to complete their mission after a civilian ship carrying North Korean civilians appeared, the New York Times (NYT) reported on the 5th. The special forces returned after allegedly massacring the North Korean civilians to maintain secrecy, according to the NYT. To date, neither the U.S. nor North Korea has publicly acknowledged or disclosed the incident.

The relationship between the United States and North Korea, a highly isolated country, has been rocky over the years. Trump issued an ultimatum to North Korea in 2017 to not make any more threats against the US, or they would “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.” His warning came as US intelligence analysts assessed North Korea had produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead at the time.

Kim and Trump would go on to exchange a series of flatteries and letters in 2018 and 2019 after the significant tensions in 2017. They then would participate in a series of unprecedented summits in 2018 with fulsome declarations of a new friendship but vague pledges of nuclear disarmament.

SEALs pulled the bodies of the civilian shellfish divers into the water to conceal them and reportedly punctured their lungs with knives so they would sink.

 

Blind Spots

The SEAL mission was intended to fix a strategic blind spot. For years, U.S. intelligence agencies had found it nearly impossible to recruit human sources and tap communications in North Korea’s insular authoritarian state.

The Navy SEAL operatives reached near their coastal destination, but an unexpected North Korean civilian fishing vessel appeared before them. Although they had observed fishermen’s movements for months and determined there would be no ship activity during that timeframe, their assessment proved incorrect. When fishermen on the North Korean vessel shone a light toward the operatives, the SEALs immediately opened fire to avoid detection. They swiftly killed all 2–3 fishermen aboard the vessel. The operatives even stabbed the corpses in the lungs with knives to ensure the bodies sank. Ultimately, the special forces retreated without completing their mission to install the surveillance device.

Gaining insight into Kim’s thinking became a high priority when Trump first took office. The North Korean leader seemed increasingly unpredictable and dangerous, and his relationship with Trump had lurched erratically between letters of friendship and public threats of nuclear war.

In 2018, relations seemed to be moving toward peace. North Korea suspended nuclear and missile tests, and the two countries opened negotiations, but the United States still had little insight into Kim’s intentions.

Amid the uncertainty, U.S. intelligence agencies revealed to the White House that they had a fix for the intelligence problem: a newly developed electronic device that could intercept the communications of North Korea's reclusive leader.

The Trump administration failed to tell lawmakers about a 2019 SEAL Team 6 incursion into North Korean territory that went awry.

The SEAL Team Six, which is a secretive US military unit formed in 1980, has worked on a range of secret, dangerous and high-risk missions, including carrying out the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.

 

 

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