Gag Order

In February of 1997 an elderly North Korean government official named Hwang Jong Yop walked into the South Korean embassy in Beijing and demanded political asylum. At the time, Hwang was the Secretary of North Korea's Workers' Party and a tutor to its reclusive leader, Kim Jong II. He also happened to be the highest-ranking official ever to have defected from North Korea.

He was widely suspected of knowing about Pyongyang's nuclear-weapons program and the power struggles rumored to be taking place at the top levels of North Korean leadership. Given the generally close relationship between the United States and South Korea, Hwang's defection seemed to promise the United States unprecedented access to inside information about North Korea and Kim Jong Il—and indeed, after his defection Hwang said publicly that he wanted to share information with the United States. Surprisingly, however, South Korea has kept Hwang tightly confined and hidden ...