When an Interviewee Runs Away Unlike Mr. Ryu, the first of the jailed pair with whom I tried to speak, Mr. Ri — a second, older spy — did not run away when presented with a journalist. That Ukraine has two North Korean spies in jail, Mr. Turchynov told me, showed that his country took a firm stand against missile and nuclear proliferation and would never have allowed secret technology to leak to Pyongyang. The guards let him go, explaining that Mr. Ryu and a second jailed North Korean spy were terrified of what would happen to them if and when they return to North Korea if they were to speak with an American news organization. Mr. Ryu and his fellow spy, Ri Tae-gil, were first arrested in Ukraine back in 2011 for trying to steal missile secrets while posing as members of a North Korean trade mission. Ukrainian officials dismissed the report as Russian disinformation and, in an effort to prove that North Korea could never have obtained secret technology in Ukraine, alerted journalists to the presence of the two North Korean spies in Zhytomyr.
