Kim Jong-ryul

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Chosŏn'gŭl 김정률
Hancha 金正 律
Revised
Romanization 		Gim Jeong-ryul
McCune-
Reischauer 		Kim Chŏngnyul

Kim Jong-ryul (* 1935 in Heian-hokudō , Chōsen Province , then the Japanese Empire , now North Korea ) is a former agent of the North Korean State Security Service and a dissident . He belonged to the North Korean nomenklatura . He fled from Bratislava to Linz in Austria on October 18, 1994 . In 2007 he got in touch with the journalist Ingrid Steiner-Gashi and her husband Dardan Gashi, which finally came in March 2010 with the book Im Dienst des Dictator. Life and Flight of a North Korean Agent , published by Carl Ueberreuter , his life story published.

Life

He was born the eldest child of four brothers and a sister. His family moved to North Korea in 1947.

From 1952 he studied at the Technical University Kim-Ch'aek in Pyongyang and in 1955 received a scholarship for studying abroad in the GDR at the TU Dresden in mechanical engineering. After his return to North Korea, he rose to a high-ranking officer and was in demand as an engineer. For the North Korean upper class, he regularly imported luxury goods from Europe and therefore had regular contact with the North Korean rulers. The linchpin of these activities was the North Korean embassy in neutral Austria in Vienna, which for this purpose temporarily maintained illegal accounts with the Creditanstalt . In 1994 he was vice director of the vehicle fleet department in the North Korean Ministry of Personal Protection and as head of a purchasing delegation charged with buying goods that could only be acquired indirectly due to the existing global embargo against North Korea.

With the help of his diplomatic passport, he traveled from Bratislava via Vienna to Linz on October 18, 1994 and went into hiding. After the North Korean authorities had to abandon a multi-day search for the colonel of the North Korean People's Army without result, they pronounced him dead. Until 1999 he lived hidden and illegally in a small apartment in Linz-Urfahr . Even after he moved from there to another unknown place in Austria, he continued to live unrecognized.

15 years after his escape, he decided to publish his story in the book "In the service of the dictator" in order, as he himself said, not to disappear underground and make one last scream before dying. He then applied for political asylum in Austria.

With the words “This book will be my death” he commented on his fear of reprisals. His family members are threatened with deportation to forced labor.

literature

  • Ingrid Steiner-Gashi, Dardan Gashi: In the service of the dictator. Life and Flight of a North Korean Agent. Ueberreuter, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-8000-7450-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c 김홍수 : [ 단독 ] " 김정일, 지하 300m 별장 데려가 더니 전기 車 구해 오라 더군요 ". In: chosun.com. Chosun Ilbo , March 27, 2010, archived from the original on November 6, 2013 ; Retrieved September 2, 2010 (Korean, original website no longer available).
  2. ↑ Elisalex Henckel: The buyer of the North Korean dictators , Die Welt from March 11, 2010.
  3. ^ Elias Bierdel: North Korean agent thriller , Deutschlandfunk, July 5, 2010.
  4. ^ Purveyor to the Court of the Beloved Leader , Die Zeit, February 17, 2010
  5. ↑ The New Life of the Gun Buyer by Kim Il-sung , Die Presse, March 2, 2010, accessed September 2, 2010
  6. ^ The unusual life story of Kim Jong Ryul , ORF of March 2, 2010.
  7. ↑ Shopping for the dictators in Spiegel Online from April 4, 2010, accessed on September 2, 2010

Web links

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Kim is the family name here, Jong-ryul is the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Kim, Jong-ryul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 김정률 (Hangeul); 金正 律 (Hanja); Gim, Jeong-ryul (Revised Romanization); Kim, Chŏngnyul (McCune-Reischauer)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION North Korean agent
DATE OF BIRTH 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Heian-hokudō , Chōsen Province , then the Japanese Empire , now North Korea