Starcraft Tournament Players found to be North Korean agents

By Damien Winters, Friday April 1, 2011, 6:02 AM

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA—In a State-sponsored press release Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il revealed that three North Korean agents had infiltrated recent Starcraft tournament in Seoul and had emerged as among the top rankers.

Hya Jong, Kim Eung-Sook and Park Chang Dok, the three agents, had been conditioned at an early age for deep infiltration to the South, and managed to embed themselves into South Korean society early on August 2006. From there, they managed to keep in close contact with an unnamed North Korean handler, who directly reported to the head of North Korean intelligence.

“It was a closely guarded secret”, our sources from the government explained. “We did not know this operation until a few hours ago.”

Eventually, the agents reported that they had successfully joined into one of the major Starcraft teams in Seoul, and between 2008-2009, correspondence between them and the nearest North Korean control station were frequently delayed by weeks.

Then, in 2010, Kim Eung-Sook, under the name silent_killer69, managed to reach second rank in the Blizzard tournament of that year. Earlier this year, in fact, he and Hya-Jong had reached the top ten rankers, and were scheduled for a match for separate teams later this month.

Why the North Korean leader chose to pull the three agents now in the middle of the tournament still bewilders many analysts. “Kim Jong-Il must have been rattled”, Stephen Brown, a South Korean political adviser, opines, “the Starcraft competition this year has been very tight, as we see many veteran players of years before choosing to stage a comeback.”

Meanwhile, the South Korean President has convened an emergency meeting with his Cabinet earlier today to discuss the implications of this breach in security. Sources explain that the North Koreans did try to plant similar agents as early as 2004, but that they were usually detected whenever they chose the Zerg race in tournaments and resorted to “newbie rushes” across the map.

“I wouldn’t have expected silent_killer69 to be a North Korean spy,” narrates one tournament competitor. “He was using Terran surgical strikes, a combination of Siege Tank-Marine-Medic advance, and aggressive economic building was uncharacteristic of how NKs usually play. I was really surprised when the news came out.”

Kim Jong-Il declared that the following Saturday would be held as an official holiday to honor the “heroes who have struck a blow to Western imperialism”. “And we will continued to prove to the world that we are stronger,” he concluded.

American analysts are now studying whether the North Koreans’ use of “nuclear strikes” in then game characterize a broader North Korean strategy in the future.