Washington, DC — The sea was black and still. In the winter of 2019, US Navy SEALs rose from the water and crawled onto a North Korean beach.
Their mission, described by the New York Times, was one of the most dangerous undertaken in decades: to plant a device that would let Washington listen in on Kim Jong-un's inner circle at the height of nuclear talks with Donald Trump.
It was not routine espionage. The operation demanded presidential approval, the Times reported, because discovery could trigger catastrophe.
If captured, the SEALs could be paraded as hostages. If killed, the risk of escalation with a nuclear power was real. Yet Trump, persuaded by intelligence chiefs that the payoff justified the gamble, gave the order.
Red Squadron of SEAL Team 6 was chosen.
The same men who had stormed Abbottabad now prepared for a very different target. They spent months rehearsing in cold American waters, learning to ride miniature subs through hours of darkness, emerging half-frozen to crawl unseen onto a hostile shore.
The Times reported that every drill was run under a blackout of communications. No drones, no live feeds.
Once inside North Korea, the men would have nothing but rehearsed timings, memory, and silence to guide them.
The Times reported that two nuclear-powered submarines ferried them close, before releasing mini-subs that glided towards the coast.
Night turned deadly
Sensors suggested an empty shoreline. The water was calm. The night silent.
Sliding doors opened and the SEALs swam into shallows, dragging their gear. Each pause, each scan above the surface, confirmed the same thing: no one there.
Then came movement. A small boat appeared, flashlights cutting across the waves. From the beach, the commandos saw the beams sweep dangerously close to the mini-subs. The sense of invisibility vanished.
They believed they had been discovered. Weapons rose. Bursts of fire cracked across the water. Seconds later, the crew slumped. The beach went quiet again.
The mission collapsed at that instant. The listening device stayed in its case. The SEALs swam out, retrieved by the waiting submarine. But as the Times later learned, the men they had killed were not armed guards. They were civilian divers, out at night in wet suits, searching for shellfish.
According to the Times, the submarine pushed into shallow water at great risk to extract them, before speeding back into the Pacific.
Back in Washington, the operation was never disclosed. Neither North Korea nor the United States acknowledged it. Congress, which by law must be told of covert operations, was kept in the dark.
Details buried until now
Legal experts quoted by the Times said the omission may have violated federal statutes designed to keep oversight committees informed.
The political theatre went on. Trump and Kim met weeks later in Hanoi. The summit collapsed without agreement. By May, Pyongyang resumed missile launches. Within months, more tests were carried out than in any previous year. American estimates now put Kim's stockpile at about 50 nuclear warheads, with capacity to build dozens more.
Inside the Pentagon, reviews were ordered. The Times said officials ruled the killings legal under rules of engagement, blaming a chain of misfortune rather than flawed planning. Several of the SEALs were later promoted.
But veterans of Special Operations saw a pattern. The elite reputation of SEAL Team 6 was built on daring missions, yet its history is scattered with such incidents. In Grenada in 1983, four men drowned before reaching shore. In Afghanistan in 2010, a hostage was accidentally killed by SEALs sent to rescue her.
The Times noted that Barack Obama, wary of such risks, had moved to limit commando raids in his second term, reserving them for extraordinary circumstances. Trump reversed those limits. The North Korea mission, run from subs in shallow waters with minimal oversight, was a direct result.
When Joe Biden took office, the scale of the risk attracted fresh scrutiny. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an independent inquiry. In 2021, key committees of Congress were finally briefed. The findings remain secret.
What has emerged, through interviews and documents gathered by the Times, is a story of ambition, secrecy and miscalculation. The SEALs trained for perfection but operated with blind spots.
Trump wagered that intelligence could bend diplomacy. What remained was a mission aborted in violence, its details buried until now.
