南韩间谍朴在潮（Park Chae-so），作为伪装的商人，在与朝鲜最高领袖金正日短暂但关键的35分钟会面后成为了国际间谍界的奇才。在1997年那次只有蓝莓酒相伴的晚餐中，他拒绝了对方的干杯提议，是因为他曾向母亲承诺终身戒酒。
然而，当南韩国家统一成为两位朝鲜领导人的共同目标时，朴在潮发誓违反自己的誓言——直到最近，这个决定仍然指导着南北关系的未来规划。在那次会面后不久，金正日送给他一瓶蓝莓酒作为礼物，并再次邀请他再品尝一杯。“金委员长，难道我们韩国人不说一个人就是太少吗？”朴问。
尽管两人仅短暂交往一次，在1997年短暂接触的35分钟后，他的故事成为了南韩情报部门的巨大胜利——他是唯一能够穿透世界上最保密政权、与朝鲜领导人单独会面的潜伏特工。在那之前，金正日只在一个公众场合被人听到声音，那是他1992年在阅兵式上发出的一句独白：“人民军英雄士兵们的光荣。”
然而，朴在潮对金正日演讲方式印象深刻。“他说起话来流畅、语无重复。”他说。在一次采访中回忆那段往事，现在70岁的朴在潮仍然是一位谨慎的讲述者。他的故事根据他自己的经历被编织成了一本书和一部电影《北上谍影》。
南韩情报部门于1998年揭露了他们的秘密后，这位前间谍成为了南韩社会的传奇人物、但也是曾经的特工。尽管他的一些叙述得到了官方和知情人士的部分证实，但他与朝鲜的关系仍然保持沉默——直到最近他的故事被《纽约时报》等媒体报道。
在朴在潮访问朝鲜期间多次说服了朝方官员们相信他有能力为他们带来急需的资金，包括通过帮助销售古代朝鲜文物等方式。每当离开酒店时，他会将衣服折叠得这样自己就能知道行李是否被检查过，在离开的时候留下一些头发以便察觉自己是否有得到信任的迹象。
一次在采访中提到他在北京遇到了一名来自朝鲜国家安全部门高级官员的事情。当时这名高级官员威胁要枪击朴在潮，因为朴拒绝配合他安排让朴与朝鲜女子结婚、生子，并将孩子留在北韩的计划。这个孩子的名字是“同吉”，即“统一”。他说每次访问朝鲜时他的生命都受到威胁。
这位来自韩国中部城市清州的朴在潮出身于一个农民家庭，在1990年被南韩国防部情报局招募后，他开始制定自己的策略以实现最终潜入朝鲜的目标。他的身份转变是为了逐渐深入朝鲜内部，与权力结构高层建立联系并搜集信息。
在1997年那次关键会面前，朴通过安排一批核桃和松子的走私事件，解决了金正日的一个侄子的债务问题，并为这位家人提供了许多帮助。之后，他在北京遇见了一名朝鲜劳动党贸易官员李哲（音译），后者将他介绍给国家安全部的一名高级官员。
在了解该安全官员儿子女儿即将结婚后，朴送给他们一对昂贵的手表作为婚礼礼物。通过这样的方式，他证实了资金对贫困的朝鲜精英阶层具有吸引力。
朴在潮表示：“我的任务是尽可能深入地进入平壤的高层，以了解他们的想法。”“如果我能取得成功，那是因为我发现他们对于金钱有着浓厚的兴趣。”
随着他与更高层级官员的关系逐渐加深，对他的监控也更加严格。无论他的掩护多么出色，在与朝鲜政府官员做生意时，他至少都受到南韩情报机构的监视。
有一次，在访问朝鲜期间，朝鲜当局向朴展示了他母亲在韩国工作和两个女儿上学的照片——以此作为警告：“不要背叛我们，否则后果自负。”
在那次关键会面之前不久，朴在潮已经策划了一个涉及邀请一支南韩电影摄制组到朝鲜拍摄电视广告的交易。金正日亲口对这个提案表示了赞同。
更惊人的是，这位领袖还让朴为他解读面部来预测未来，听说朴擅长通过观察面部特征进行算命。然而，他也为朴提供了一份更为严重的工作——帮助阻止1997年南韩总统大选中由长期反对党领袖金大中获胜的阴谋。朝鲜希望由一个经验不足的保守派领导南韩政府。
在朴在潮将此事告知了助手并敦促朝鲜支持反对党胜利后，最终金大中赢得了选举——南韩情报部门和朝鲜为了各自的目的也进行了不同方式的政治诋毁计划，试图将他描绘成不可信的共产主义者。朴在潮个人对这种干涉持反对意见。
1998年，韩国媒体揭露了他们的秘密后，他的上级情报机构解雇了他，并给他发了一笔22.4万美元的奖金。“我没有任何遗憾。”他说，“我不让敌国干涉我国的选举。”
之后不久，他与一名名为李哲（音译）的朝鲜贸易官员重新联系，在韩朝项目中作为自由职业者工作——这次是真正在做生意。在2005年，他们合作在上海拍摄了一部三星手机广告片——韩国和朝鲜历史上第一次由两位名人共同出演的广告。
随着南韩政治环境的变化，保守派再次掌握了政权后，朴的旧情报机构开始注意到他。2010年，机关官员因涉嫌非法接触朝鲜人并分享敏感军事数据而逮捕了他。他辩称那些信息并不机密，但被判在监狱中单独关押六年。
自从2016年获释以来，他已经没有正式工作。尽管朴在潮没有计划重新联系他的朝鲜关系，但他经常想象如果他们需要帮助访问海外藏匿的资金时可能会与自己联系——因为他在担任间谍时曾帮助他们转移资金。
“他们需要我的帮助来接触这笔钱。”他说道。
新闻来源：www.nytimes.com
原文地址：The Wily Spy Who Risked His Life to Meet North Korea’s Secretive Leader
新闻日期：2024-09-27
原文摘要：
When the South Korean spy met with Kim Jong-il, he declined the late North Korean leader’s offer of a toast, citing a promise to his mother that he would never drink. But the undercover agent, masquerading as a businessman, vowed to break his abstinence when the two Koreas reunified, until recently an overriding policy goal of the leaders of both countries. Park Chae-so, the spy, amused Mr. Kim when the North Korean dictator gave him a bottle of blueberry wine as a parting gift. He asked for another. “Mr. Chairman, don’t we Koreans say one is one too few?” he said. Mr. Park’s 1997 meeting with Mr. Kim, the father of the current leader, Kim Jong-un, lasted only 35 minutes. But it was a coup for South Korea’s intelligence community: He was its only known undercover agent to penetrate the security cloaking the world’s most secretive regime and finagle an audience with its enigmatic leader. Until then, Mr. Kim was so reclusive that even his own people had heard his voice only once, in 1992, when he shouted one sentence into the microphone while inspecting a military parade: “Glory to the heroic soldiers of the People’s Army.” But Mr. Park was impressed with Mr. Kim’s speaking style. “There was a flow — and not a single repetition,” Mr. Park, 70, said of his conversation with the supreme leader. Mr. Park’s identity and his meeting with Mr. Kim, who ruled North Korea from 1994 to 2011, were exposed in a political scandal in 1998, turning him into a celebrated — but former — spy in the South. These days, the ex-spy is a cautious but vivid storyteller, and this account is based on his version of events, which have inspired a book about his life and a movie, “The Spy Gone North.” While parts of his story have been corroborated by officials and associates, neither North Korea nor his former spy agency has officially commented on his work. Mr. Park visited North Korea more than a dozen times, convincing North Korean officials that he could get them badly needed cash, including by helping them sell porcelain and other ancient North Korean artifacts abroad. He said that whenever he was there, he folded his clothes — and left a couple strands of hair in his bag — in such a way that he would know whether his belongings were searched while he was away from his hotel. When the searching stopped, he knew he had gained the trust of his minders. A senior North Korean official once put a gun to his head when he refused to cooperate with a plan to have him sleep with a North Korean woman and have a baby in the North, he said during an interview in Cheongju, where he lives, one of a few conversations he had in Cheongju and in Seoul with The New York Times. Mr. Park was told that Mr. Kim had already named the prospective baby: Tongil, or “Unification.” “Whenever I visited the North, I knew my life was on the line,” Mr. Park said. “When the plane took off from Pyongyang and was up in the air, I could breathe again, relieved that I had survived another trip.” A son of a farming family in Cheongju, south of Seoul, Mr. Park was an army major in 1990 when he was recruited by the Defense Intelligence Command. He began creating a new reputation as part of a carefully choreographed plan to eventually have him infiltrate North Korea. He borrowed money, squandering it in real estate deals gone wrong, and often got into trouble with superiors. He added a few criminal records to his file. Three years later, in 1993, he was tapped by the country’s top intelligence service, the Agency for National Security Planning, just as North Korea’s clandestine nuclear program had turned into an international crisis. By this time, he was known among his friends and former military colleagues — and hopefully among the North Korean spies in the South who would check up on his background — as a disgruntled former military intelligence officer, heavily indebted and dabbling in various private business enterprises. For agents spying on North Korea, the famine there in the 1990s created rare opportunities. The North’s elites traveled to China to trade and earn badly needed cash. There, they met South Korean businessmen, some of them undercover agents who piggybacked on business deals to meet North Korean officials and establish an intelligence-gathering foothold. Mr. Park had his first breakthrough when he learned that one of North Korea’s biggest players in such deals was a nephew of Jang Song-thaek, Mr. Kim’s brother-in-law and at the time one of the country’s most powerful figures. To get the nephew in trouble with his Chinese creditors, Mr. Park arranged for a shipment of walnuts and pine nuts to be confiscated at a South Korean port. He then gave the nephew $160,000 to pay off his debt, and the grateful Jang family began pulling strings for Mr. Park and doors started to open. One of his new contacts, Ri Chol, a North Korean Workers’ Party trade official, later introduced him in turn to a senior official from the Ministry of State Security, the North’s secret police, in Beijing. After learning that the security official had a son and daughter about to get married, Mr. Park delighted him with a pair of expensive watches as a wedding gift. Such episodes convinced him that money talked among the elites of the impoverished North. “My mission was to penetrate as deep inside the Pyongyang leadership as possible to learn what they were thinking,” Mr. Park said. “If I had any success, it was because I figured out their taste for money.” As his contacts expanded up the hierarchy, the scrutiny increased. No matter how good his cover story, Mr. Park’s North Korean contacts would have known that anyone doing business with them was at least being watched by South Korean intelligence. North Korean officials once showed him photos of his mother working at a garden and his two daughters going to school in South Korea. The message: Don’t betray us or else. By the time Mr. Park met Mr. Kim, he had already crafted a lucrative business deal for North Korea that involved bringing a film crew to the North to shoot South Korean TV commercials. Mr. Park said Mr. Kim personally had blessed this proposal. Surprisingly, the leader also asked Mr. Park to “read his face,” having heard from his aides that Mr. Park practiced the Asian art of fortunetelling based on facial features. But Mr. Kim also had a more serious plan for Mr. Park. North Korea wanted him to help with its scheme to block Kim Dae-jung, the longtime opposition leader in the South, from winning its 1997 presidential election. Pyongyang instead wanted the South led by a less-experienced conservative leader. At home, Mr. Park’s spy agency also did not want Kim Dae-jung, a former dissident whom it once attempted to assassinate, to win the election either. His agency and North Korea, sworn enemies of each other, both plotted separate smear campaigns designed to depict Kim Dae-jung as an untrustworthy communist. Mr. Park personally opposed such interference. He tipped off aides to Kim Dae-jung so they could prepare against such plots, while urging North Koreans to embrace an opposition victory. After the opposition leader won the presidency, Mr. Park’s bosses at the spy agency went to prison for illegally meddling in the election. Before they did, they leaked classified intelligence reports that mentioned an undercover agent code-named “Black Venus” who had met Mr. Kim in Pyongyang. There was enough detail for journalists to figure out who Black Venus was. Mr. Park was preparing for a trip to North Korea in 1998 when South Korean media identified him as Black Venus. His agency discharged him with a $224,000 bonus. “I had no regrets,” Mr. Park said. “I could not let an enemy country interfere with an election in my country.” He then made a second fateful decision. He reconnected with Mr. Ri, the North Korean trade official, and worked as a freelancing agent for inter-Korean projects — a genuine businessman this time. In 2005, he and Mr. Ri arranged the filming of a Samsung cellphone commercial in Shanghai, the first of its kind, that featured two female celebrity entertainers from both Koreas. After the political mood changed in South Korea with the conservatives taking back power in 2008, his old agency caught up with him. In 2010, agency officials arrested Mr. Park on charges of illegally contacting North Koreans and sharing sensitive military data with them. Mr. Park argued that none of it was secret, but he was sentenced to six years in solitary confinement. Since he was freed in 2016, he has not had a formal job. Although Mr. Park has no plans to reconnect with his North Korean contacts, he often wonders if they might reach out to him as he had helped them hide money abroad when he was a spy. “They need my help to access the money,” he said.
