North Korea’s new enemy: Free North Korea
The saga of the Hermit Kingdom gets weirder
In February of this year, the embassy for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in Madrid, Spain, was attacked. Ten men broke into the embassy, beat and interrogated the staff, and left with stolen computers, hard drives, flash drives, and cellphones. North Korea has a new enemy. A small and secretive group calling itself the “Provisional Government of Free Joseon (Free North Korea)” or Free Joseon, the culprits behind the embassy raid.
This organization is possibly the first ever active and organized opposition group to the family that’s ruled North Korea since the nation’s founding. Not much is known about Free Joseon except that they have been busy and that they may have connections to the US government.
The group’s name, Joseon, is how North Koreans refer to their country and to the Korean peninsula as a whole. Which they kind of see as one and the same, eventually. Similar to their Chinese neighbor’s attitude to a certain large island, there is only one Korea: Joseon. The name, also spelled Chosun, comes from the last Korean dynasty to rule the peninsula before being annexed by the Japanese in the early 20th century.
They originally referred to themselves as the Cheollima Civil Defense and in fact this is still the…
