Hunt for North Korea's Red October — Solidarity

Hunt for Red October: New Zealand’s secret service busts a North Korean asset in Auckland.

2 Feb

In early October 2020 screens started flashing at the Freedman's Bank Building in Washington DC, headquarters of the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), the US Treasury's sanctions enforcement arm. Intelligence from New Zealand and their own automated systems had detected a violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2397 – a centrepiece of the American campaign to bring down North Korea's nuclear and ballistic weapons programme. Agents scratched their heads: what was happening in New Zealand, normally a docile, compliant, backwater? No, this is not a Le Carré novel; it actually happened.

Someone was transferring money to the North Koreans, a breach of the US Treasury’s Destination Country and Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. Someone was violating US enforcement of sanctions on North Korea. Someone was going to pay for it.

OFAC operates a sophisticated global financial surveillance network that monitors international wire transfers through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system, which processes trillions of dollars in cross-border payments daily. Because the US dollar dominates international finance and most transactions ultimately clear through American banks, OFAC effectively monitors the global financial system.

OFAC was soon in touch with the US Embassy in Wellington, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, the New Zealand Treasury and senior political figures. Police and senior public servants in Wellington were scrambling to get to the bottom of it. Lights stayed on at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Government Communications Security Bureau. Cyber security teams were activated. Interdepartmental protocols were triggered. “We thought: This was a big fucking deal,” one of New Zealand’s top intelligence minds said (off the record). It was North Korean. It was October. So why not call it Hunt for Red October?

Face to face with “Red October”

Red October was identified as Peter Wilson, a man who had travelled to North Korea multiple times. Within days, police and intelligence agencies assembled a squad for a raid on his address in Highland Park, a quiet suburb in East Auckland. Red October never saw it coming.

19 October. Knock, knock! Peter Wilson opened the door to the task force. “Would anyone like a cup of tea?”

After this, the spy story goes wonky, goes pear-shaped, splutters to an anticlimactic halt. But it also gets genuinely interesting.

Peter Wilson was 80 years-old at the time and had helped organise funds for Covid-19 PPE masks to be sent via Indonesia to the North Korean Red Cross. The isolated country was being ravaged by the disease. Some Christian ministers, Peter Wilson and other members of the New Zealand Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Society, had cobbled together $USD2,000 for masks. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were wasted “unmasking” him.

“Go ahead, make my day, punk!”

With the raid still in progress, Peter Wilson called his lawyer, Matt Robson. By the time he arrived, phones, laptops and five boxes of documents had been seized and Wilson had been threatened with prosecution for breaches of sanctions legislation. The Honorable Matt Robson is both Wilson’s lawyer and a former Minister of Disarmament in the New Zealand government. In the coming weeks he had often acrimonious exchanges with various authorities all the way up to cabinet ministers.

“When it came down to threats that ‘We're going to prosecute you for these breaches of New Zealand legislation,’ I told them, ‘Go ahead, make my day! The New Zealand public will be interested in you prosecuting Peter and these ministers for the heinous ‘crime’ of helping people to protect themselves against Covid in North Korea!’ Imagine: putting a respected agronomist, Peter Wilson, who has served the United Nations and his own country in many parts of the world, who has helped the poorest people in many countries, including North Korea, imagine putting him through that?” Robson told me this week.

The group had even put out a press release about the donations; they weren’t hiding anything. We will probably never know who first ‘unmasked’ the plot to save lives in North Korea. Was it OFAC, New Zealand cyber spies, a bank staffer or simply a knuckle dragger at the US Embassy in Wellington who happened to read the press release? Wilson described it all as a “sick joke” but also one that left his partner shaken by the home invasion. In the end the government gave up; it was all too silly and the Crown Law Office advised them to let it go.

It does give you a flavour, however, of the power and reach of OFAC. UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese is one of many humanitarians on the OFAC hit list, her ability to do essentials like pay for medical procedures, travel or even buy a meal, blocked by their long reach into the global banking system. The raid on Wilson’s home also shows the extent to which countries like New Zealand are willing to hurt civilians at home and abroad in order to please the Americans.

2026. The West continues its starvation siege.

North Korea has drifted out of the news in recent times but earlier this month I received an email from the New Zealand Democratic Republic of Korea Society (NZDPRK) – one of 65 such friendly societies around the world. It included recent correspondence with the New Zealand ministry of foreign affairs. The letter called the sanctions regime against North Korea unethical and immoral – and that triggered the series of articles I have now written.

The NZDPRK criticised the New Zealand government for sending RNZAF Poseidon P-8A maritime patrol aircraft and HMNZS Aotearoa to the East China and Yellow Seas to enforce a siege whose only tangible outcome has been to kill civilians. Eleven Western governments have been doing the same since the resolution was converted into a brutal starvation siege at the end of 2017. My article “Blunderfest” details the strategic incompetence of the current approach.

Intrigued by the letter, I interviewed Peter, who is the Secretary of the NZDPRK Society. My first question was: how on earth did you get involved with North Korea?

He had been an agricultural specialist who was sent to North Korea with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). In various capacities he has visited the North eight times.

IFAD is a specialised agency of the United Nations that works to address poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries. Peter went there, not to support their government, but to help people get enough food to survive. Commendable. In the process he came to realise the damage countries like ours are doing in pursuit of strategically flawed goals and he had the moral courage to do something about it.

We’ve been here before

We’ve been here many times before. On the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children as a result of US sanctions and blockades, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright infamously sighed: “This is a very hard choice but we think the price is worth it.”

Israel trots out the same style of arguments (Hamas are killers) in justifying their incineration of tens of thousands of men, women and children in Gaza. From Hiroshima to Yemen, passing by Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala, Libya and many others, the West has made civilians pay the butcher’s bill for the ‘sins’ of their rulers.

In respect to North Korea and the West’s pressure campaign, the Russians have challenged the legality of their actions:

“Acting in circumvention of the UN Security Council, these “enthusiasts” have taken the liberty to monitor compliance with the UNSC sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK),” Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in 2024.

“The Russian Federation is seriously concerned about the continuing aggravation in Northeast Asia as the result of irresponsible actions by the United States and its allies. There is no doubt that the policy of mounting sanctions pressure is misguided, useless and inhuman, and should be replaced with peaceful diplomacy based on mutual respect.”

Once again I ask: Why are we ceding the moral high ground to the Russians and Chinese on this issue?

Madness is repeating the same mistakes

Madness is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different outcomes. Isn’t it time we accepted that the West has lost all rights to be the Sheriff and Judge of the World? Isn't it time to stop the Wars without Strategy, this endless brutalization? Isn’t it time for the countries of the Western world to seek a better path?

Eugene Doyle

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on European geopolitics, Middle East, and peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.