ENEMIES

Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, describes a growing threat posed by foreign agents and terrorists who exploit U.S. weaknesses in this second of three excerpts from his new book, “Enemies: How America’s Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets — And How We Let It Happen” (Crown Forum), out this week. Read Part 1 here

FBI agents found the typewritten letter in a search of the office of the suspected spy for North Korea.

“It would be preferable,” it said, “that you find a student inside the church.”

The letter, from one of the spy’s North Korean handlers, used “church” as code for “Washington, D.C.”

It was December 1997. The following March, the FBI intercepted a fax in which their suspect, Korean-American businessman John Joungwoong Yai, gave a progress report on his main goal — recruiting a subagent who could join the U.S. government and obtain top-secret information for the communist regime in Pyongyang.

Possible employment stops for the “disciple” that Yai discussed with an associate: the Library of Congress, the FBI, even a news reporting job in Washington.

Yai, of Santa Monica, Calif., had planned to recruit someone “for a long time and anguished over it,” he wrote to his North Korean contacts.

“There are two or three persons whom I have been working on for a while. In [my] opinion, the person has to possess a high quality presence; at least or higher than a U.S. university education, absolutely fluent in English and Korean, young with clear ideology, and has potential to work in the church.”

Yai concluded his fax with good news. “I have successfully found an excellent, young high quality person who lacks nothing for becoming a student who has potential for a long range plan.”

FBI documents in the case of John Joungwoong Yai provide a rare glimpse into the secret world of North Korean spying within the United States.

North Korea today epitomizes the term “rogue state.”

Under absolute leader Kim Jong-il, who has ruled as an iron-fisted demigod since his father’s death in 1994, the communist regime has demonstrated that it can starve and brutalize its own people as well as fire long-range ballistic missiles to threaten other nations.

Kim fulfilled the goal of his father, Kim Il-sung, by covertly developing a nuclear weapons arsenal in part to ensure that the regime stays in power.

Story Continues →