http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2019/march/27/judge-identifies-cia-related-man-who-led-the-raid-on-north-koreas-embassy-in-spain/

The person identified as leader of the raiding party, Adrian Hong Chang, is a know anti-North Korea activist. He usually goes under the name Adrian Hong, not Hong Chang as the AP and NYT reports claim:

Hong was the co-founder and Executive Director of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), an international NGO devoted to human rights in North Korea. In May 2006, LINK helped arrange the first asylum to be given to North Korean refugees by the US.

Hong was arrested and deported from China for his efforts to help North Korean refugees living in the country illegally.

…

In 2009, Hong was selected as a TED fellow and an Arnold Wolfers Fellow at Yale University.

A 2007 UN Human Rights Council paper (pdf) list Hong as a member of Freedom House, a neo-conservative infested influence organization largely funded by the US State Department.

Over the years Adrian Hong wrote several op-eds for US outlets. A 2011 piece in Foreign Policy calls for violent regime change:

The time to topple the criminal government in Pyongyang is now. Here's how to do it.

The very progress of our global civilization is for naught if we continue to let the very idea of North Korea exist. North Korea is not a failed state, with warlords fighting for land and treasure. Its atrocities do not stem from factional fighting, crimes of passion, or mob violence. It is on another level entirely — a staggering system entirely built and mastered for the express purpose of propagating human suffering and ensuring the continued exploitation of the people so that the very few can benefit.

It is a moral obligation of the highest order that the international community intervene. What can be done, we must do — and now is the time.

Foreign Policy and other outlets introduce Adrian Hong as "Managing Director of Pegasus Strategies LLC". There are several companies under that name but none that seems to be related to Adrian Hong.

>>5959442

A 2016 San Diego Union Tribune piece introduces him as:

Hong, a San Diego native, is president of the Joseon Institute, an independent think tank undertaking policy-relevant research and planning in preparation for dramatic change on the Korean peninsula. He was imprisoned in China in 2006 for helping North Korean refugees escape.

At one point the Cheollima Civil Defense Group renamed itself to "Free Joseon". The Joseon dynasty ruled Korea from 1392 to 1897. It went down when Japan tried to gain control of the country which it achieved a few years later.

The Joseon Institute in New York(?) is preparing for regime change in North Korea:

The Joseon Institute draws on on cutting-edge research from the Korean Peninsula and the region, as well as international best practices and learnings from other sudden transitions in the past century, successful and failed, to best prepare for a new North Korea. A core team of scholars and staff in New York City works with a wide-network of world-class scholars, resident and non-resident fellows, policymakers, practitioners, researchers and volunteer collaborators around the world.

>>5959447

The board of advisors of the Joseon Institute consists of a former prime minister of Libya who was "elected" after the murder of Muhammad Ghaddafi, a former prime minister of Mongolia, and the conservative Member of the British Parliament Fiona Bruce. A 2011 Financial Times piece - Christian Tories rewrite party doctrine - associates Fiona Bruce with evangelical Christians. Evangelicals are involved in "rescuing" North Korean defectors in China, something that Cheollima entity and Adrian Wong also claim to have done.

>>5959460

The NYT adds that the group has evidently prepared for a legal fight:

Lee Wolosky, a former national security and State Department official in several American administrations, said he had been retained as legal counsel by the group, which he said was called the Provisional Government of Free Joseon, or Cheollima Civil Defense.

Wolosky is a high caliber lawyer who for many years served on the National Security Council. As private lawyer he was involved in several legal cases related to 'national security'. He at least once used a variant of graymailing, 'a defensive tactic in an espionage trial whereby theaccused threatens to reveal secret information unless the charges are dropped':

Wolosky has led or co-led some of the firm's high-profile matters in recent years, including […] Restis v United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a precedent-setting private defamation case in which the United States Government asserted the state secrets privilege, resulting in a victory for Wolosky's client UANI.

Should Wolosky defend Adrian Hong in a legal fight against the Spanish extradition request he might threaten to reveal secrets the US would not like to have published. The case would then be put down.

Hiring Wolosky must be expensive.

Adrian Hong and the Cheollima group, if it exists at all, have no apparent sources of income. One wonders through which routes the US and/or South Korean secret services finance this game.