On 22 February 2019 at the Embassy of North Korea in Madrid, the political group Free Joseon, which is opposed to Kim Jong Un and the current government of North Korea, is alleged by Spanish and American authorities to have attacked the embassy. Free Joseon maintains that they were invited in to facilitate a high-level defection. A group of individuals stole mobile telephones, two USB flash drives and a hard drive from the embassy and handed them over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States. The event took place after the Singapore summit between North Korea (DPRK) and the United States and prior to the Hanoi summit. As of early April 2019, one person had been arrested in connection with the incident and two international arrest warrants had been issued by the Spanish Audiencia Nacional. The suspected perpetrators are citizens of Mexico, the US and South Korea, although the latter two governments denied any connection with the incident.
The incident is alleged to have been violent; the suspected perpetrators purportedly possessed knives and replica guns, and a number of embassy staff were treated for injuries. Another member of the embassy staff injured herself by leaping from an upper window before alerting police. The Spanish authorities' investigations were kept secret for the first month; when they released their findings—including the names of the suspected perpetrators—they were criticised for possibly endangering the named peoples' lives. The Spanish privately briefed the media that they suspected but could not prove Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) involvement because the attack was professional in its precision. One former CIA agent, however, said the timing of the attack and its high-profile nature would have made it impossible for the CIA to have condoned it or taken part. The Government of North Korea described the incident as an act of terrorism and demanded an international investigation; the embassy and its attaché, however, did not report the attack or any injuries sustained by the staff to the Spanish police.
Free Joseon has denied allegations that this incident was a break-in raid of the compound, and accusations of being directed by foreign intelligence services. Rather, the group asserts that it was invited in by some undisclosed number of embassy staffers who wished to defect. In order to protect their family members in North Korea, who would ostensibly be punished for a relative's defection, these embassy staffers reportedly requested a staged kidnapping and physical injuries to absolve themselves of suspicion from the North Korean government. It is alleged that a staffer's panic around the plot being discovered precipitated the botched defection effort.
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