Spanish police investigate DPRK embassy break-in

Spain’s El Confidencial news site claims that police in the country are investigating an apparent break-in at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea embassy in Madrid, during which staff were reportedly bound and gagged by attackers who drove away with computers.

According to the online newspaper, the group of unidentified men entered the embassy in the west of the capital last Friday and held staff hostage, which was broadly confirmed on Wednesday through a Foreign Ministry source contacted by Reuters.

The Interior Ministry officially said police were investigating an incident, but gave no details except to say that a DPRK citizen had been injured and that no one had filed a complaint.

El Confidencial said one of the staff had managed to free herself and escape, alerting neighbors with screams in Korean.

Through an interpreter, she told police: “A group of men came into the embassy and has gagged the staff.”

After she told police that staff were being held, gagged, they knocked on the door to investigate, and a man told them everything was fine. But soon after, two cars left the compound at high speed, one of them carrying the man who had answered the door. The staff walked out of the building soon after.

A spokeswoman for the national police said the force would not be commenting, but added that no one had filed a complaint at a police station.

The newspaper said the attackers had taken away computers belonging to various staff members, and police were trying to find out what information they may have contained and what else might be missing.

“Basically, the information that El Confidencial describes is how the events unfolded,” a Foreign Ministry source said.

An Interior Ministry source told Reuters that police were not ruling out any motive, including robbery.

In 2017, Spain expelled the DPRK ambassador in retaliation for DPRK’s missile testing. The ambassador, Kim Hyok-chol, played a leading part in organizing this week’s meeting in Vietnambetween United States President Donald Trump and the DPRK leader, Kim Jong-un.

Reuters could not reach any representative of the DPRK in Spain. El Confidencial said it had contacted an official, who declined to comment.

The Foreign Ministry told Reuters: “We have been in close contact with the embassy and we were notified by the police at the outset ... The police investigation in progress and we cannot comment on it.”