{"id":263381,"date":"2026-02-02T03:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T03:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/263381\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T03:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T03:37:10","slug":"hunt-for-red-october-new-zealands-secret-service-busts-a-north-korean-asset-in-auckland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/263381\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunt For Red October: New Zealand\u2019s Secret Service Busts A North Korean Asset In Auckland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Eugene<\/a>
\nMonday, 2 February 2026, 3:34 pm
Opinion: Eugene Doyle<\/a><\/p>\n

In early October 2020 screens started flashing at the
\nFreedman’s Bank Building in Washington DC, headquarters of
\nthe Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), the US
\nTreasury’s sanctions enforcement arm. Intelligence from New
\nZealand and their own automated systems had detected a
\nviolation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2397
\n\u2013 a centrepiece of the American campaign to bring down
\nNorth Korea’s nuclear and ballistic weapons programme.
\nAgents scratched their heads: what was happening in New
\nZealand, normally a docile, compliant, backwater? No, this
\nis not a Le Carr\u00e9 novel; it actually
\nhappened.<\/p>\n

Someone was transferring money to the North
\nKoreans, a breach of the US Treasury\u2019s Destination Country
\nand Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. Someone was
\nviolating US enforcement of sanctions on North Korea.
\nSomeone was going to pay for it.<\/p>\n

OFAC operates a
\nsophisticated global financial surveillance network that
\nmonitors international wire transfers through the Society
\nfor Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT)
\nsystem, which processes trillions of dollars in cross-border
\npayments daily. Because the US dollar dominates
\ninternational finance and most transactions ultimately clear
\nthrough American banks, OFAC effectively monitors the global
\nfinancial system.<\/p>\n

OFAC was soon in touch with the US
\nEmbassy in Wellington, the New Zealand Security Intelligence
\nService, the New Zealand Treasury and senior political
\nfigures. Police and senior public servants in Wellington
\nwere scrambling to get to the bottom of it. Lights stayed on
\nat the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Office of
\nPrime Minister and Cabinet, and the Government
\nCommunications Security Bureau. Cyber security teams were
\nactivated. Interdepartmental protocols were triggered. \u201cWe
\nthought: This was a big fucking deal,\u201d one of New
\nZealand\u2019s top intelligence minds said (off the record). It
\nwas North Korean. It was October. So why not call it Hunt
\nfor Red October?<\/p>\n

Face to face with \u201cRed
\nOctober\u201d<\/p>\n

Advertisement – scroll to continue reading<\/p>\n

Red October was identified as Peter
\nWilson, a man who had travelled to North Korea multiple
\ntimes. Within days, police and intelligence agencies
\nassembled a squad for a raid on his address in Highland
\nPark, a quiet suburb in East Auckland. Red October never saw
\nit coming.<\/p>\n

19 October. Knock, knock! Peter Wilson
\nopened the door to the task force. \u201cWould anyone like a
\ncup of tea?\u201d<\/p>\n

After this, the spy story goes wonky,
\ngoes pear-shaped, splutters to an anticlimactic halt. But it
\nalso gets genuinely interesting.<\/p>\n

Peter Wilson was 80
\nyears-old at the time and had helped organise funds for
\nCovid-19 PPE masks to be sent via Indonesia to the North
\nKorean Red Cross. The isolated country was being ravaged by
\nthe disease. Some Christian ministers, Peter Wilson and
\nother members of the New Zealand Democratic People\u2019s
\nRepublic of Korea Society, had cobbled together $USD 2,000
\nfor masks. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were wasted
\n\u201cunmasking\u201d him.<\/p>\n

\u201cGo ahead, make my day,
\npunk!\u201d<\/p>\n

With the raid still in progress, Peter
\nWilson called his lawyer, Matt Robson. By the time he
\narrived, phones, laptops and five boxes of documents had
\nbeen seized and Wilson had been threatened with prosecution
\nfor breaches of sanctions legislation. The Honorable Matt
\nRobson is both Wilson\u2019s lawyer and a former Minister of
\nDisarmament in the New Zealand government. In the coming
\nweeks he had often acrimonious exchanges with various
\nauthorities all the way up to cabinet
\nministers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it came down to threats that
\n\u2018We’re going to prosecute you for these breaches of New
\nZealand legislation,\u2019 I told them, \u2018Go ahead, make my
\nday! The New Zealand public will be interested in you
\nprosecuting Peter and these ministers for the heinous
\n\u2018crime\u2019 of helping people to protect themselves against
\nCovid in North Korea!\u2019 Imagine: putting a respected
\nagronomist, Peter Wilson, who has served the United Nations
\nand his own country in many parts of the world, who has
\nhelped the poorest people in many countries, including North
\nKorea, imagine putting him through that?\u201d Robson told me
\nthis week.<\/p>\n

The group had even put out a press release
\nabout the donations; they weren\u2019t hiding anything. We will
\nprobably never know who first \u2018unmasked\u2019 the plot to
\nsave lives in North Korea. Was it OFAC, New Zealand cyber
\nspies, a bank staffer or simply a knuckle dragger at the US
\nEmbassy in Wellington who happened to read the press
\nrelease? Wilson described it all as a \u201csick joke\u201d but
\nalso one that left his partner shaken by the home invasion.
\nIn the end the government gave up; it was all too silly and
\nthe Crown Law Office advised them to let it go.<\/p>\n

It
\ndoes give you a flavour, however, of the power and reach of
\nOFAC. UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian
\nTerritories Francesca Albanese is one of many humanitarians
\non the OFAC hit list, her ability to do essentials like pay
\nfor medical procedures, travel or even buy a meal, blocked
\nby their long reach into the global banking system. The
\nraid on Wilson\u2019s home also shows<\/a> the extent to which
\ncountries like New Zealand are willing to hurt civilians at
\nhome and abroad in order to please the
\nAmericans.<\/p>\n

2026. The West continues its starvation
\nsiege.<\/p>\n

North Korea has drifted out of the news in
\nrecent times but earlier this month I received an email from
\nthe New Zealand Democratic Republic of Korea Society
\n(NZDPRK) \u2013 one of 65 such friendly societies around the
\nworld. It included recent correspondence with the New
\nZealand ministry of foreign affairs. The letter called the
\nsanctions regime against North Korea unethical and immoral
\nand that triggered the series of articles I have now
\nwritten.<\/p>\n

The NZDPRK criticised the New Zealand
\ngovernment for sending RNZAF Poseidon P-8A maritime patrol
\naircraft and HMNZS Aotearoa to the East China and Yellow
\nSeas to enforce a siege whose only
\ntangible outcome has been to kill civilians.<\/a> Eleven
\nWestern governments have been doing the same since the
\nresolution was converted into a brutal starvation siege at
\nthe end of 2017. My article \u201cBlunderfest<\/a>\u201d
\ndetails the strategic incompetence of the current
\napproach.<\/p>\n

Intrigued by the letter, I interviewed
\nPeter, who is the Secretary of the NZDPRK Society. My first
\nquestion was: how on earth did you get involved with North
\nKorea?<\/p>\n

He had been an agricultural specialist who was
\nsent to North Korea with the International Fund for
\nAgricultural Development (IFAD). In various capacities he
\nhas visited the North eight times.<\/p>\n

IFAD is a
\nspecialised agency of the United Nations that works to
\naddress poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing
\ncountries. Peter went there, not to support their
\ngovernment, but to help people get enough food to survive.
\nCommendable. In the process he came to realise the damage
\ncountries like ours are doing in pursuit of strategically
\nflawed goals and he had the moral courage to do something
\nabout it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been here before<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve
\nbeen here many times before. On the death of hundreds of
\nthousands of Iraqi children as a result of US sanctions and
\nblockades, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright infamously
\nsighed: \u201cThis is a very hard choice but we think the price
\nis worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel trots out the same style of
\narguments (Hamas are killers) in justifying their
\nincineration of tens of thousands of men, women and children
\nin Gaza. From Hiroshima to Yemen, passing by Vietnam,
\nCambodia, Guatemala, Libya and many others, the West has
\nmade civilians pay the butcher\u2019s bill for the \u2018sins\u2019
\nof their rulers.<\/p>\n

In respect to North Korea and the
\nWest\u2019s pressure campaign, the Russians have challenged the
\nlegality of their actions:<\/p>\n

\u201cActing in circumvention
\nof the UN Security Council, these \u201centhusiasts\u201d have
\ntaken the liberty to monitor compliance with the UNSC
\nsanctions against the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of
\nKorea (DPRK).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russian Federation is
\nseriously concerned about the continuing aggravation in
\nNortheast Asia as the result of irresponsible actions by the
\nUnited States and its allies. There is no doubt that the
\npolicy of mounting sanctions pressure is misguided, useless
\nand inhuman, and should be replaced with peaceful diplomacy
\nbased on mutual respect,\u201d Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria
\nZakharova said in 2024<\/a>. Once again I ask: Why are we
\nceding the moral high ground to the Russians and Chinese on
\nthis issue?<\/p>\n

Madness is repeating the same
\nmistakes<\/p>\n

Madness is repeating the same mistakes and
\nexpecting different outcomes. Isn\u2019t it time we accepted
\nthat the West has lost all rights to be the Sheriff and
\nJudge of the World? Isn’t it time to stop the Wars without
\nStrategy, this endless brutalization? Isn\u2019t it time for
\nthe countries of the Western world to seek a better
\npath?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in
\nWellington. He has written extensively on European
\ngeopolitics, Middle East, and peace and security issues in
\nthe Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform
\nsolidarity.co.nz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a9 Scoop Media<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Eugene<\/a><\/p>\n

Contributor<\/p>\n

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region.<\/p>\n

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