Al Jazeera Mistakenly Leaks the Identity of a North Korean Intelligence Asset

Journalists failed to properly redact cables revealing that the British government attempted to recruit a North Korean spy. Now the lives of the foreign asset and his family potentially are in grave jeopardy.

Al Jazeera on Sept. 23 posted leaked materials from the British Secret Intelligence Service outlining in detail its attempt to enter into a "long term clandestine relationship in return for payment.”

The four-page document was published with dozens of redactions, including the exact name of the North Korean individual in question. 

But “dates and specific locations relating to where the North Korean individual met with British spies remains readable, vastly narrowing down the suspects North Korean authorities will no doubt be looking for, the Daily Dot reports. “Worse, the redactions were done carelessly, enough that observers have been able to make out key identifying information that the Daily Dot will not republish or describe in any detail.”

Key identifying details are said to have been deciphered by a researcher in the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.  

It appears that Al Jazeera has since quietly fixed some, though not all, of the redaction errors. 

The Washington Post writes that Al Jazeera disclosed how the British government had asked for South African help recruiting the asset as he passed through South Africa.

In an e-mail, Clayton Swisher, director of Investigative Journalism at Al Jazeera, told the Post that no errors were made in the original redactions and that Al Jazeera's lawyers had looked over the document. 

But a former intelligence officer who writes the Inspector O mystery books under the pseudonym James Church said the reporting will endanger many vulnerable individuals. "Every North Korean official who has been in South Africa since the beginning of time is going to be put through the wringer," he writes. "Anyone who doesn't have every second accounted for is in for a bad time."