Revealed: North Korea’s Legendary Special Operations Assassins

And why the world should fear them. 

Adam Rawnsley [2]

In a conversation with former Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, acting as a White House envoy, Park shared his suspicions. “Now the pattern is changing,” he said, according to a summary of the talks. “[The North Koreans] are setting the stage for open aggression against South Korea.” But U.S. officials didn’t see it that way. In reports over the weeks following the incidents, the CIA averred that the Blue House raid was “probably the beginning of a stepped-up Communist terrorist campaign” but that “nothing the North Koreans have done suggests they are about to embark on large-scale hostilities.”

Thirty-one shadows crept up to the fence in the cold winter night, cut it and slipped through, walking into the American side of the demilitarized zone that buffers North and South Korea. It was January 1968 and the North Korean special operations troops were headed south.

The men were from the 124th Army Unit, an elite military organization charged with carrying out guerilla operations against the North’s sworn enemies to the south.

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