North Korea’s plans for the Winter Olympics are probably not peaceful, a former North Korean spy warns.
The North boycotted the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, which came several months after North Korean agents bombed a commercial airliner, killing more than 100 people. Kim Hyon-hui, one of the two agents responsible, was captured before she could take her own life as her partner did. The former spy, who has dedicated her life to exposing North Korean secrets, asserts that North Korea is up to no good as the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea approach.
“When I was given the mission, my role was to disrupt the Seoul Olympics,” Kim told NBC in a recent interview. “North Korea thought that hosting the Olympics would permanently divide the Koreas … and make South Korea more economically powerful than the North. So I was ordered to harm the ‘South Korean puppets’ by hitting the flight.”
While the North may not be planning anything as horrible as the bombing of Korean Air flight 858, Kim suspects that the rogue regime is participating in the Olympics because it has ulterior motives, not because it shares the South Korean government’s vision of a peaceful Korean Peninsula.
“North Korea is using the Olympics as a weapon,” the former North Korean spy told reporters. “It is trying to escape the sanctions by holding hands with South Korea, trying to break free from international isolation.”
She argues, as many analysts and Korea watchers have, that North Korea intends to separate the South from its U.S. protector, clearing the way for reunification of the Korean Peninsula under North Korean rule.
North Korea’s long-term objectives never really change, experts previously told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The former spy expects regional tensions to rise again. (RELATED: It’s A Trap! North Korea’s Sudden Interest In Talks With The South Seems Suspicious)
“North Korea will start its provocations again,” she said, adding that “North Korea won’t give up its nuclear weapons” because the weapons are a “lifeline” for the regime.
Since talks between the North and South began, North Korea has completely lived up to the pessimistic expectations of the more skeptical observers. It has threatened to pull out of the Olympics over South Korean ties to the U.S., demanded the end of joint military exercises involving U.S. and South Korean troops, rebuked its southern neighbor for attempting to address the North’s illegal nuclear program, and even insulted South Korean officials.
The North’s behavior is not consistent with a country that has come to the table ready to make peace; rather, the rogue regime appears to be bullying the South, as it has for decades.
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