SEAL Team 6 Failed in North Korea: The 2019 Covert Raid That May Have Derailed Nuclear Talks

In September 2025, a bombshell investigative report by the New York Times revealed that a team of Navy SEALs from the legendary SEAL Team 6 — the same unit that killed Osama Bin Laden — had secretly infiltrated North Korea in early 2019. Their mission was to plant surveillance equipment capable of intercepting Kim Jong Un’s communications during a critical period of high-level nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and the Trump administration. The operation, which required President Trump’s direct approval, promised unparalleled intelligence on Kim’s private discussions, his true stance on denuclearization, and his conversations with allies like Russia and China.

But a cascade of small errors turned the mission into a disaster that resulted in the deaths of unarmed North Korean civilians, the compromise of the operation, and — according to some analysts — may have torpedoed the most promising diplomatic opening with Pyongyang in a generation. Six years later, the story’s emergence raises urgent questions about accountability, the limits of special operations, and the long shadow this failure may still cast over the diplomatic landscape in Asia.

The Strategic Context: Trump, Kim, and the Nuclear Gamble

When Donald Trump first came to power in 2016, he adopted a markedly tougher stance on North Korea than his predecessor, Barack Obama. Tensions between Washington and Pyongyang ran high in the early days of the administration. Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence threatened that North Korea would end up like Libya — a devastated country whose leader was ousted — if Kim Jong Un refused to surrender his nuclear weapons.

But then the relationship underwent a dramatic and unexpected transformation. Trump went from calling the North Korean dictator “Little Rocket Man” and threatening to rain “fire and fury” on Pyongyang to exchanging letters filled with flowery prose with the isolated leader. Trump would later say that the two had “fell in love” after exchanging these letters. So apparently effective was this personal diplomacy that North Korea temporarily halted testing of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.

Despite these seemingly warmer ties, Washington remained deeply uncertain about Kim’s actual intentions. The intelligence community identified a potential solution: a newly developed piece of surveillance technology that, if planted inside North Korea, could provide the U.S. with the ability to intercept Kim Jong Un’s private communications. The intelligence this would yield — Kim’s real negotiating positions, his discussions with Russia and China, his internal deliberations — was the kind of material that analysts would consider invaluable.

The catch was formidable: someone would have to physically enter North Korea, one of the most closed and surveilled nations on Earth, and install the device.

The Geography Problem: Why Infiltrating North Korea Is Nearly Impossible

The biggest obstacle to entering North Korea is its geography. To the south, the Korean Peninsula is bisected by the demilitarized zone (DMZ), a 250-kilometre-wide buffer zone jointly patrolled by soldiers from both Koreas. Attempting to cross it would almost certainly end in death. To the north, Pyongyang is separated from China by the Yalu and Tumen rivers.

There was virtually no chance that Beijing would permit the United States to use Chinese territory to launch a clandestine operation into North Korea. Even in the unlikely event that such permission were granted, American forces would still have to contend with the extensive network of informants in North Korean border villages.

With land-based infiltration routes effectively ruled out, the mission was assigned to SEAL Team 6 in 2018. The plan called for a maritime approach. According to sources who spoke with the New York Times, the U.S. Navy would maneuver a 180-metre-long nuclear-powered submarine into the waters off North Korea.

From there, two mini-submarines would be deployed to motor silently toward the shore. These were wet subs, meaning the SEALs inside would be immersed in near-freezing ocean water for approximately two hours, relying on scuba gear and heated suits to survive the cold. Near the beach, the mini-subs would release a group of about eight SEALs who would swim to the target, install the surveillance device, and then slip back into the sea.

Going in Blind: The Absence of Real-Time Intelligence

One of the most dangerous aspects of the mission was the lack of real-time overhead surveillance. For special operators, “going in blind” means operating without drones providing high-definition video of the target area — footage that is typically streamed to both the ground team and commanders in distant operations centers. This kind of overhead coverage is considered crucial to the success of most modern special operations missions.

In North Korea, however, deploying a drone would have exponentially increased the risk of detection. Military officials told the New York Times that in place of drones, the team would have to rely on satellites in orbit and high-altitude spy planes operating in international airspace miles away. These assets could only provide low-definition still images. Compounding the challenge, these images could not be relayed in real time or transmitted to the mini-submarines because such transmissions might reveal the team’s position.

The entire mission had to proceed under a near-total communications blackout.

To compensate for these limitations, the SEALs spent months in intensive training, studying patterns of human movement, fishing activity, and weather data in the target area. They concluded that arriving in the dead of night during winter would minimize the chance of encountering anyone. The team had conducted a similar operation in 2005 and were confident they could execute the mission successfully.

The Green Light and the Hanoi Summit Timeline

In early February 2019, President Trump announced that he would meet Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, for a second nuclear summit, following their historic first meeting in Singapore in 2018. Around the same time, the SEALs received the green light to execute the mission.

The New York Times was unable to confirm the specific factors the president weighed when approving the operation. Two of the top national security officials at the time — National Security Adviser John Bolton and acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan — declined to comment.

Given the timing, it is plausible that the primary consideration was the White House’s desire to arm Trump with as much intelligence as possible before his sit-down with Kim. Trump had long presented himself as a master dealmaker, and a successful agreement with North Korea on denuclearization would have been a defining achievement of his presidency.

Three Small Mistakes: How the Mission Unraveled

With presidential authorization secured, the SEALs deployed aboard their submarines and headed for North Korea. On a still, calm night, the mini-subs glided toward the target. Sensors indicated the shore appeared to be empty.

The first mistake occurred at the designated parking location on the sea floor. According to the original plan, the two mini-subs were supposed to park facing the same direction. However, one of the subs overshot its mark, had to execute a U-turn, and the two vessels ended up pointing in different directions. With time limited, the team decided to proceed to shore and correct the positioning issue later.

The SEALs, carrying untraceable weapons loaded with untraceable ammunition, swam toward the beach. Every few meters, they surfaced briefly to scan their surroundings. Everything appeared clear. This was the second mistake.

They failed to spot a small North Korean boat bobbing in the water nearby. The failure was understandable in context: the sensors in their night vision goggles were designed in part to detect heat signatures, and the wet suits worn by the North Korean occupants had been chilled by the cold seawater, rendering them nearly invisible to thermal detection. The SEALs reached the shore convinced they were alone.

Back at the mini-subs, one of the pilots revved the electric motor to reposition the submarine that was facing the wrong direction. This was the third mistake. Some SEALs later came to believe that the motor’s wake may have caught the attention of the crew on the North Korean boat. If the crew turned to investigate the source of the disturbance, they might have spotted the light from the submarine’s cockpit glowing in the dark water.

Taken individually, any one of these errors would likely have been inconsequential. But like dominoes arranged in a perfect line, the mistakes cascaded. The North Koreans noticed something. Shining flashlights and talking excitedly, they began steering their boat toward the mini-subs’ location.

The Fatal Decision: Shots Fired Under a Communications Blackout

Some of the mini-sub pilots would later report that the North Korean boat still appeared to be at a safe distance and they doubted whether they had actually been spotted. But to the SEALs on land, it appeared that whoever was in the boat was closing in on the mini-subs’ position.

The communications blackout now proved devastating. The SEALs on shore could not radio their teammates underwater to clarify the situation. Nor could the senior SEAL on the beach consult with his superiors miles away on the main submarine. Faced with what he perceived as an imminent threat to the operation and his team, the senior enlisted SEAL made the decision to fire on the boat.

The occupants of the boat — unarmed North Korean civilians who had been diving for shellfish — were killed. Through sheer catastrophic bad luck, they had been in the water at the precise moment the SEALs came ashore. By opening fire, the team had given away their location and potentially compromised the entire mission. What remained was to dispose of the evidence.

Officials later stated that the bodies were pulled into the water and their lungs were punctured to ensure they would sink. The SEALs then fled the scene.

Shortly afterward, U.S. spy satellites detected a surge of North Korean military activity in the area. Pyongyang never made any public statements about the deaths, and most American officials remained unsure whether North Korean intelligence ever fully pieced together what had happened or identified who was responsible.

The Hanoi Summit Collapse: Coincidence or Consequence?

At the end of February 2019, just weeks after the botched raid, Trump and Kim Jong Un met in Hanoi for a two-day nuclear summit that was surrounded by a genuine sense of optimism. In a speech at Stanford University, Andrew Kim, former head of the CIA’s Korea Mission Center, recounted how Kim Jong Un had told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that he was a father and husband who did not want his children to live their lives carrying nuclear weapons on their backs. While such statements may have served a strategic purpose in humanizing the dictator to American officials, they also suggested a leader potentially open to compromise.

During the summit itself, when a reporter asked Kim whether he was willing to shut down his nuclear program, he responded: “If I’m not willing to do that, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Yet the summit was abruptly cut short on its second day. The White House claimed the breakdown occurred because Pyongyang demanded the full lifting of sanctions in return for only incremental concessions. North Korea later countered that it had sought only a partial lifting of sanctions and, in exchange, would have been willing to completely dismantle its primary nuclear facility at Yongbyon.

It is entirely possible that the summit collapsed purely on the merits of the negotiations themselves. Diplomatic talks fail routinely, even between allies. The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada took years to negotiate, over a decade to bring into force, and still awaits ratification by multiple European states more than eleven years after being signed — and that was a basic trade agreement where the biggest sticking point was market access. High-stakes nuclear negotiations between adversaries could easily collapse on their own.

But some observers wonder whether the real cause of the summit’s failure was not to be found in the talks themselves but in the botched Navy SEAL raid. David Philipps, one of the authors of the New York Times investigation, is among those who believe this version of events. If North Korean intelligence had managed to piece together even a partial picture of what had happened — the infiltration, the killings, the surge of military activity — that knowledge alone could have been sufficient to destroy any trust and sink the negotiations.

It would also explain other anomalies, such as Pyongyang’s resumption of weapons testing soon after the summit. Without official confirmation from the DPRK, however, this remains a theory.

The Long-Term Fallout: North Korea’s Pivot to Russia and China

In the years following the failed Hanoi summit, North Korea moved decisively further away from the United States. Pyongyang deepened its embrace of Russia and China, eventually sending troops to assist Moscow in its war against Ukraine. As the DPRK has grown closer to its powerful patrons, it has become only more uncompromising on its nuclear status. Today, North Korea’s official position is that any future talks with Washington will only occur if the United States first recognizes North Korea as a nuclear-armed state — a condition that no American administration has been willing to accept.

With Moscow funneling oil money and new technology to the DPRK in exchange for shells and missiles for use in Ukraine, and Beijing providing diplomatic cover for Kim’s regime, the incentive structure that once made a peaceful resolution to the North Korean nuclear question at least theoretically possible has fundamentally shifted. The window for serious negotiations has not merely closed — it has been sealed shut.

If the botched 2019 raid truly contributed to the collapse of the Hanoi summit, then it may rank as one of the most consequential military operations undertaken by the United States in the past decade — not for what it achieved, but for what it destroyed.

Why Did This Story Leak After Six Years?

Whenever classified operations surface in the press, the question of motive is as important as the story itself. This mission had remained secret through two very different presidential administrations. The fact that it emerged more than six years later suggests motivations beyond routine investigative journalism.

When asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper about his sources’ possible motivations, David Philipps suggested that they may have been driven by a need for accountability. The Trump administration never informed key congressional leaders about the mission or the subsequent internal review. This omission alarmed several military officials because the public image of the Navy SEALs has been defined almost entirely by high-profile successes — the Bin Laden raid chief among them — while their failures remain shrouded in classification.

Philipps articulated the concern directly: “The SEALs have this Superman type of reputation in our culture and a lot of it is deserved… But there’s a lot of failures that are classified that nobody ever learns about, including policy makers. So another president may think I can rely on the SEALs to do this and not have an idea of how mixed their record is.”

This observation points to a systemic issue in how special operations are authorized and overseen. President Obama had increased oversight of special operations during his administration, reserving complex commando raids for extraordinary situations such as hostage rescues. The first Trump administration reversed many of those restrictions and reduced the amount of high-level deliberation required before approving sensitive missions. The North Korea raid — approved at the presidential level but apparently without full congressional notification — illustrates the consequences of that shift.

Oversight, Accountability, and the Future of Special Operations

The revelation of the failed North Korea mission raises broader questions about the balance between operational secrecy and democratic accountability. Special operations forces operate in the shadows by design, and classification is essential to protecting both the operators and national security. But when missions go wrong — when unarmed civilians are killed, when diplomatic processes may be derailed, when the consequences ripple across years of foreign policy — the argument for secrecy becomes harder to sustain.

The fact that Congress was apparently kept in the dark about both the mission and its aftermath is particularly significant. Congressional oversight exists precisely to ensure that the executive branch’s use of military force is subject to scrutiny, especially when operations carry the kind of strategic risk that this one did. Top Trump officials themselves believed that even the smallest military action against North Korea could provoke a catastrophic reaction. That such a high-risk operation was conducted without the knowledge of key legislators raises serious questions about the adequacy of existing oversight mechanisms.

Whether the public disclosure of this story will lead to meaningful changes in how special operations are authorized and reviewed remains to be seen. But at a minimum, it serves as a stark reminder that the most elite military units in the world are not infallible, and that the consequences of their failures can extend far beyond the battlefield — shaping the diplomatic landscape for years, if not decades, to come.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What was the objective of the SEAL Team 6 mission to North Korea?

The objective was to plant newly developed surveillance equipment inside North Korea that would allow the U.S. to intercept Kim Jong Un’s private communications, including his discussions with allies like Russia and China and his actual negotiating positions on denuclearization ahead of the Hanoi nuclear summit in late February 2019.

Why was a maritime approach the only option for infiltrating North Korea?

North Korea is surrounded by nearly impassable barriers: the heavily patrolled demilitarized zone to the south, and rivers separating it from China to the north where border villages have extensive informant networks. A nuclear-powered submarine deployed two mini-submarines that would motor silently toward shore, with SEALs immersed in near-freezing water for about two hours before swimming to the target.

What were the three mistakes that led to the mission’s failure?

First, one mini-submarine overshot its parking position and had to U-turn, leaving the subs facing different directions. Second, the SEALs failed to detect a nearby North Korean fishing boat because the fishermen’s wet suits were chilled by cold seawater, making them nearly invisible to thermal detection. Third, repositioning one of the mini-subs may have created a wake that attracted the attention of the North Korean boat.

Who was killed, and why did the SEAL open fire?

Unarmed North Korean civilians who were diving for shellfish were killed when the senior enlisted SEAL perceived them as an imminent threat and opened fire on their boat. The mission’s communications blackout — necessary to avoid detection — meant he could not radio teammates underwater or consult superiors on the main submarine before making the decision.

Did the botched raid cause the Hanoi summit to collapse?

The summit was cut short on its second day in late February 2019, with the White House claiming North Korea demanded full lifting of sanctions for minimal concessions. Some analysts, including New York Times investigative reporter David Philipps, believe North Korean intelligence may have pieced together what happened and that knowledge destroyed the trust needed for serious negotiations, though without official DPRK confirmation this remains a theory.

Sources

• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/navy-seal-north-korea-trump-2019.html
• https://www.newsweek.com/seal-team-6-north-korea-mission-donald-trump-response-2125444
• https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-rejects-donald-trump-letter-kim-jong-un-2084586
• https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/05/politics/north-korea-navy-seal-mission-nyt
• https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/stop-calling-the-donald-trump-kim-jong-un-relationship-a-bromance
• https://www.reuters.com/article/world/we-fell-in-love-trump-swoons-over-letters-from-north-koreas-kim-idUSKCN1MA03L/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/world/asia/north-korea-kim-speech.html
• https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/east-asia/north-korea/report-korea-democratic-peoples-republic-of/
• https://www.dailynk.com/english/north-korean-authorities-hire-more-informants-to-clamp-down-on-dissent/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/world/asia/north-korea-south-us-nuclear-war.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElxxHBgy_pc
• https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/transcript-andrew-kim-north-korea-denuclearization-and-us-dprk-diplomacy
• https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/6/us-navy-seals-killed-north-korean-civilians-during-botched-mission-report