'They need a lawyer': The man who represented the Pong Su's North Korean crew

'They need a lawyer': The man who represented the Pong Su's North Korean crew
Richard Baker November 21, 2019 https://www.smh.com.au/national/they-need-a-lawyer-the-man-who-represent...

Melbourne criminal solicitor Jack Dalziel wasn’t expecting much after he sent a letter to the North Korean embassy in Canberra.

He had watched the drama of the high-seas-pursuit of the North Korean cargo ship, Pong Su, on TV over the 2003 Easter break and had grown concerned at how bewildered the sailors appeared to be as they were being escorted off the ship in Sydney Harbour by armed Australian soldiers and police.

“Well, it may sound strange to say, but there was a sort of a smirking attitude about the chase of the ship somehow in the news,” Mr Dalziel said. So he advised North Korea’s diplomats in Canberra that the detained crew would need a lawyer, and that he was ready to serve.
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The Australian Federal Police had charged the 30 men from the ship with aiding and abetting the importation of a record 150 kilograms into Victoria on April 15 2003 near Lorne on the Great Ocean Road.

“I felt sorry for their situation, despite what they were accused of. But they just seemed to be a little bit trapped,” Mr Dalziel said.

For a few weeks he heard nothing in response to his letter and thought the North Koreans must be doing their own thing. Then one day a group of well-dressed Asian men turned up at the North Melbourne office of law firm Ellinghaus & Linder and one of them asked for him.

This was how Mr Dalziel, a solicitor who described his daily fare as “petty crime” and “miscellaneous” offences, got himself the case of a lifetime.

Episode Seven of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald’s podcast series, The Last Voyage of the Pong Su, details Mr Dalziel’s legal defence of the Pong Su’s crew and how a friendship grew between him and a charismatic North Korean man sent to Australia as the purported owner of the ship.

Jon Hak-bom was different to the men from the Pong Su. Though he was younger than many of the sailors, everyone, including the ship’s master and political secretary, treated him with deference.

Mr Jon had been schooled in Poland, travelled frequently and spoke decent English. “He's extremely intelligent and he grasped subtleties of our legal system and society,” Mr Dalziel said of him.

Mr Jon was also on the radar of Australia’s intelligence agencies. They suspected the Pong Su Shipping Company was not the privately owned business the North Koreans were making it out to be, and that Mr Jon was not a mere ship owner.

The Age and Herald have confirmed that Mr Jon was suspected of being a North Korean intelligence operative. The Australian Security Intelligence Service was keen to find out more about him, and pressed those who got to know him for information.

Mr Dalziel said he found Mr Jon to be good company and spent time with him eating at Asian restaurants in Melbourne’s Crown Casino complex and in Footscray. He even took Mr Jon up to his parents’ farm in Seymour, north of Melbourne. Mr Dalziel said his mum found the North Korean visitor charming.

The lead prosecutor for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions in the Pong Su case, John Champion, told The Last Voyage of the Pong Su that prosecutors were briefed on their personal security during the long-running legal battle.
Court sketch from August 2005

Court sketch from August 2005Credit:Illustration by Matt Davidson

“We were told the likelihood was that there were North Korean agents that were circulating around. We did get security briefings from our own personal security point of view so we have to be mindful of some aspects like that,” said Mr Champion, who is now a Justice of the Victorian Supreme Court.

“We were given pretty straightforward and common sense advice. Things like: Don't leave your laptop in the motorcar. You might want to think about putting some security systems in your homes.”

But Mr Champion said nothing untoward happened during the three-year-long Pong Su case.

After the Pong Su court drama finished, Mr Dalziel and Mr Jon kept in touch, mostly via email. But he has not heard anything from his North Korean friend for several years now.
Police guarding the paddy wagon carrying the Pong Su crew members into court

Police guarding the paddy wagon carrying the Pong Su crew members into courtCredit:Jason South

That Mr Jon was trusted to operate his own Hotmail account as early 2004 when nearly all other North Koreans were — and still are — banned from the internet suggests he was a man of considerable influence.

North Korea closed its embassy in Canberra in early 2008.