Cheollima Civil Defense wants to take on Kim Jong-un and free North Korea. Who are they, and do they have a shot?

The dissident group, said to be behind a February raid on Pyongyang’s embassy in Spain, has appealed to media not to reveal their members’ identities due to concerns about the hermit kingdom’s ‘death squads’

Cheollima previously took credit for the 2017 extraction of Kim Han-sol, the son of Kim Jong-un’s assassinated brother, and anti-North Korean graffiti outside the embassy in Malaysia

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Photo: Kyodo

Published: 8:00pm, 19 Mar 2019Updated: 2:14pm, 20 Mar 2019

A dissident group plotting to overthrow North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has appealed to the media not to expose its members’ identities and compromise their safety, citing the regime’s “death squads” who would boldly carry out assassinations even on foreign soil.

Cheollima Civil Defense, said to be behind a raid on Pyongyang’s embassy in Madrid on February 22, on Sunday issued a statement on its website emphasising the need to remain anonymous. Several members had already escaped threats to their lives, and if their identities were made known, their less lucky friends and relatives in concentration camps in North Korea would face execution, the group said.

“The Pyongyang regime does not respect the rights of its people to speak about or challenge its rule,” the statement read. “Even beyond its borders, it will use assassinations, terrorism, and even weapons of mass destruction, to destroy any who might oppose or challenge their monopoly on power.”

The group also advertised that it would sell 200,000 “visas” using the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrency to visit Free Joseon – the name the movement plans to give North Korea upon its liberation. The visas are expected to go on sale on the website from Sunday, March 24, at a price of one unit of Ethereum digital currency per 1,000 visas.

Ethereum was trading around US$137 per unit on Tuesday.

Cheollima, which also goes by the name Free Joseon itself, first rose to prominence in 2017 for spiriting Kim Han-sol – the son of Kim Jong-nam who was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur, purportedly by North Korean agents – away from Macau. In a video that appeared after his extraction, the 23-year-old said he was with his mother and sister in a safe location.