The tragedy of the Korean War… Death of Blake, an ancient double spy

George Blake, who was a double spy between Britain and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, died on the 26th (local time) at the age of 98.

He is also a person closely related to the tragedy of the Korean peninsula, such as being taken prisoner by the North Korean military during the Korean War and turning into a communist.

A spokesman for the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), a Russian foreign intelligence agency, said through Russian TASS that Blake died on the 26th (local time). Blake worked for the British foreign intelligence agency MI6, but was later caught working as a Soviet Union (former Soviet Union) agent and was imprisoned.

There is an analysis that the tragedy he suffered on the Korean peninsula had an effect on the background of his becoming a double spy. In 1948, under the title of Deputy Consul at the British Embassy in Korea, he came to Seoul to collect information on the Soviet Union in North Korea, China, and East Asia.

During the Korean War that broke out in 1950, he became a prisoner of the North Korean People’s Army along with other diplomats and was taken prisoner from Pyongyang to the Yalu River for three years. In the meantime, seeing US military planes continually bombarding small towns in North Korea, he leaned toward the Soviet Union, said in a 2011 British Independent interview.

“It was a shame that I belonged to a very strong and technologically superior country that targets seemingly defenseless people,” he said. “I thought it would be better for mankind to end the war with communism.”

Concealing that he became a communist, he returned to England after the Korean War in 1953. From this time on, he was a double agent. In the 1950s, the identity of 400 Western European spies who were active in Eastern Europe was handed over to the Soviet Union. For that reason, many Western spies were executed for treason.

After living as a double espionage, he was eventually discovered to be a Soviet spy in 1961, and was sentenced to 42 years in prison and imprisoned in a British prison. However, in 1966, with the help of a fellow prisoner and a prisoner who was released from prison, he crossed the prison wall and escaped. Then, after crossing to East Berlin, which was the communist sphere, he fled to the Soviet Union.

It is known that he spent the rest of his life treated as a hero in the Soviet Union and later in Russia. He lived under the Russian name Gregory Ivanovich and educated spies. I even received an old National Security Council (KGB) pension.

According to the book The Great Traitor: The Secret Life of George Blake, filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock tried to make Blake’s more cinematic life into a film titled’A Short Night’. However, director Hitchcock passed away without the film being made.

Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Blake in 2007 for his Cold War merit. President Putin, who worked for the KGB in the past, mourned his death, saying, “A man of great courage and an excellent expert.”

Reporter Seo Yujin [email protected]