This former North Korean operative claims Kim Jong Un has hundreds of spies in America

Kim Jong-Un visits a military unit on an island southwest of Pyongyang on in August 2012.

(Image credit: REUTERS/KCNA)

published 22 May 2015

That startling claim surfaced in interviews CNN conducted with two North Korean defectors, including Kang Myong Do, who said that in the 1980s, his job was to send North Korean spies around the world, a practice that still exists today. Kang says there are likely hundreds of agents working for North Korea in the U.S. at any one time, most of them Korean-Americans.

How do Kim's agents recruit Korean-Americans to help North Korea?

"There are three different tactics they use," he said. "First is to give them free visas to North Korea, second, to give them access to do business and make money there, and third, they use women to entice them. This tactic has been widely used since the '80s." [CNN]

The entire CNN report is worth a read and watch — it's full of fascinating nuggets on North Korean spycraft. But there's one important asterisk: "CNN is unable to independently verify [these] claims, as North Korea is one of the world's most secretive countries."