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Today, we bring you inside a secret military operation the United States conducted against North Korea during the first Trump administration.
The story begins with an intelligence problem: It was hard to know what was happening inside North Korea. American spies found it difficult to recruit human sources, and information rarely leaked out. But policymakers in Washington wanted to understand more about Kim Jong-un, the country’s unpredictable leader, ahead of a meeting with Trump. Here is part of the investigation, published today in The Times, into the operation they devised.
I’ve covered the military for 15 years. I reported this story alongside veteran military reporter Matthew Cole.
A group of Navy SEALs emerged from the ink black ocean on a winter night in early 2019 and crept to a rocky shore in North Korea. They were on a top secret mission so complex and consequential that everything had to go exactly right.
The objective was to plant an electronic device that would let the United States intercept Kim Jong-un’s communications amid high-level nuclear talks with President Trump.
The mission had the potential to provide the United States a stream of valuable intelligence. But it meant putting American commandos on North Korean soil — a move that, if detected, could not only sink negotiations, but could also lead to a hostage crisis or an escalating conflict with a nuclear-armed foe. It was so risky that it required the president’s direct approval.
For the operation, the military chose SEAL Team 6’s Red Squadron — the same unit that killed Osama Bin Laden. SEALs who were more used to quick raids in places like Afghanistan and Iraq would have to survive for hours in frigid seas, slip past security forces on land and perform a precise technical installation. The SEALs rehearsed for months, aware that every move needed to be perfect.
