North Korean defectors building an army to topple Kim Jong-un
A coalition of North Korean defectors tell Julian Ryall how they are arming and educating their countrymen in preparation for an uprising they hope will end the Kim dynasty
The weapons are being smuggled over the border.
Communication links with the outside world are in place.
Sympathisers, informants and members of the military and regional authorities who have become disillusioned with the North Korean regime know what is coming.
All it will take, insists Choi Min-hyuk, is a spark to ignite an insurrection that he and hundreds of other defectors have been planning for a decade.
And once that flame catches, Choi tells Post Magazine, it will signal the end of a barbaric regime that has caused untold death and despair for the people of North Korea under three generations of the Kim family.
“When I was young, I tried to be loyal to the party and the only ideology we had, juche, which, they tell us, means ‘self-reliance’,” says Choi, who uses a pseudonym to protect himself, his family members in North Korea and his network of revolutionaries.
“I tried to make that my life and, for a while, I was able to do so, but slowly I understood that nothing anyone does in North Korea is of their own free will.”