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A life amid spies: The two koreas

Jeff Stein · SpyTalk · ·12 min read
Commentary by Hex Index staff

Jeff Stein delivers a rare, first-person account of the invisible war waged not with missiles, but with phishing links, expensive wine, and psychological pressure. While most coverage of North Korea focuses on nuclear tests or diplomatic summits, this piece exposes the gritty, daily reality of how the regime's intelligence apparatus targets human rights advocates in the United States. It is a chilling reminder that for those who speak truth to power in Pyongyang, the battlefield is often their own laptop and living room.

The Anatomy of Influence

Stein, a former State Department official and scholar, opens with a startling admission: he was once the target of a recruitment effort by South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS). The narrative begins in 2009, when a junior diplomat initiated contact over Stein's writings on North Korean human rights abuses. What follows is a masterclass in the subtle escalation of coercion. Stein describes how the NIS moved from casual lunches to assertive instructions, culminating in a direct offer of payment for op-eds.

A life amid spies: The two koreas

"They were nonetheless paying close attention," Stein writes of the intelligence officers who sat silently in a dimly lit restaurant, refusing to exchange business cards. "A CIA friend told me later that they were probably sizing me up as a potential 'agent of influence' for them in Washington on the subject of human rights in the north—an issue of extreme sensitivity to the high command in Pyongyang."

The author's refusal to be bought is the pivot point of the story, but the real insight lies in the method. The NIS didn't just ask for favors; they attempted to manufacture a relationship of dependency. When the senior officer presented a bottle of French wine worth over a hundred dollars, Stein's husband, a retired diplomat, immediately recognized the danger. "The cost of that wine told me something that it should also tell you," he advised. "You must get out of this. You don't know what you're involved in and what it's developing into. Today it's Op-eds, tomorrow it will be something else."

This anecdote underscores a critical dynamic in allied intelligence work: the fine line between cooperation and compromise. Stein's experience illustrates that even friendly nations can overreach when the stakes involve a regime as opaque and ruthless as North Korea's. Critics might argue that Stein's rejection of the NIS's overtures was an missed opportunity for deeper intelligence sharing, but the author's stance—that independent scholarship must remain untethered from state funding—holds up as a necessary defense of intellectual integrity.

There are friendly countries, but there are no friendly intelligence services.

The Digital Siege

While the South Korean attempts were clumsy and eventually halted, the response from Pyongyang was far more sophisticated and relentless. Stein details a decade-long campaign of cyber warfare that targeted not just his work, but his very ability to function. The North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), specifically its Bureau 121, utilized malware, spoofed communications, and social engineering to intimidate him.

The escalation was terrifyingly personal. "When I opened my computer one morning in the early 2010s, I found the entire screen bright red with a white skull and crossbones in the center," Stein recalls. "Other times, the keys on my keyboard stopped responding when I was writing about North Korea."

Stein argues that these attacks are not merely technical nuisances but a form of psychological terror designed to silence dissent. The regime's strategy evolved from brute force to deception. By 2020, agents were using artificial intelligence to craft highly convincing phishing emails, posing as Western officials or even colleagues. One particularly insidious attempt involved a fake invitation to a conference that didn't exist, designed solely to trick Stein into clicking a malicious link.

"We would never exclude you from a meeting, Roberta," a senior official at a think tank told Stein after he reported the fake invitation. "But there is no meeting."

The author notes that this digital harassment has become a standard cost of doing business for anyone advocating for human rights in North Korea. "Being prepared to purchase new computers and phones and engage IT and other preventative specialists has become yet another intrinsic part of advocating for human rights in North Korea." This shift highlights a broader, often overlooked reality: the digital divide is now a human rights divide. Those who speak for the oppressed are forced to live in a state of perpetual digital siege, a reality that the National Intelligence Service of South Korea has long understood, and which the RGB has weaponized with increasing precision.

The Human Cost of Information

Stein's narrative is not just about the mechanics of espionage; it is about the human cost of information control. The North Korean regime views the dissemination of outside information as an existential threat, a "human rights racket" that undermines their total control. Stein argues that the only way to break this cycle is to flood the information vacuum with truth.

"Change will only come about in North Korea if enough people in their country begin to know about how truly bad their conditions are and how they compare with those with South Korea and other parts of Asia," Stein writes. "Then they will begin to 'separate their thinking' from the propaganda imposed upon them by an unusually ruthless but threatened dictatorship."

This argument resonates with historical precedents. Just as the South Korean National Intelligence Service has historically played a dual role in both monitoring the North and supporting defectors, the flow of information remains the most potent weapon against the regime's isolation. However, Stein also acknowledges the risks. "Sometimes they have pretended to be from Reuters, the Voice of America, Arirang (South Korea's broadcasting network) or other media. They have sought my opinions..." The danger is that in the scramble to counter the regime's lies, the lines between truth and deception can blur, making every interaction a potential trap.

Bottom Line

Jeff Stein's account is a vital, unsettling look at the personal toll of challenging one of the world's most repressive regimes. The strongest part of the argument is its unflinching depiction of how cyber warfare has become a tool of state terror against individuals, not just nations. Its biggest vulnerability is the inherent difficulty in quantifying the success of information campaigns against a closed society like North Korea. Readers should watch for how the administration and allied intelligence agencies adapt their cyber-defense strategies to protect the very advocates who are trying to shine a light on the darkness inside the Hermit Kingdom.

Deep Dives

Explore these related deep dives:

  • National Intelligence Service (South Korea)

    The NIS is central to this article as the agency that attempted to recruit the author. Understanding its history, structure, and controversial operations (including past scandals involving influence operations abroad) provides essential context for the recruitment tactics described.

  • Human rights in North Korea

    The author's advocacy on this issue is what made her a target for recruitment. This article details the prison camps, famines, and systematic repression she was writing about, providing the substantive background to understand why both Korean governments were so interested in her work.

Sources

A life amid spies: The two koreas

by Jeff Stein · SpyTalk · Read full article

THE ONLY SPY AGENCY THAT EVER TRIED TO RECRUIT ME was South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the NIS. It started sometime in 2009, when a young man from Seoul’s embassy in Washington asked to talk with me about articles and Op-eds I’d been writing in the New York Times, Washington Post and various journals advocating stronger responses by the U.S. and the United Nations to North Korea’s appalling human rights record.

“What motivates you to write these articles?” he asked. I explained my prior service as a human rights advocate at the State Department and private organizations and said that, although I was formally retired, I felt too little attention was being paid to the situation in North Korea.

That evidently interested those he reported back to at the embassy, because soon thereafter, a more senior officer, presumably from the NIS, became involved.

I began to receive invitations to lunch and on one occasion was asked to brief a group of visiting Korean diplomats and other officials on the perspectives of the U.S. and nongovernmental organizations on North Korea’s human rights situation.

We sat around a table in a dimly lit restaurant, where it was easy to identify which ones were intelligence officers, since they uttered not a word nor offered me their business cards, a standard practice with the Koreans. They were nonetheless paying close attention. A CIA friend told me later that they were probably sizing me up as a potential “agent of influence” for them in Washington on the subject of human rights in the north—an issue of extreme sensitivity to the high command in Pyongyang.

Some time later, the attitude of the senior NIS officer toward me began to change. He became more assertive, almost instructing me to write additional Op-eds and articles. Although our viewpoints were very similar, I told him firmly that I was “an independent scholar” and wrote only “on my own steam.”

He wasn’t deterred. He next showed up at a public meeting on North Korea at the Brookings Institution, from which I’d recently retired, and in front of a group I was talking with interrupted to ask whether or not I was going to write another article on North Korea. The damaging impression he left, intended or not, was that he would have some role in what I would be writing. Afterward, when he asked if we could meet alone, I ...