On November 24, 1959 the Muscovites who were walking in the center of the Soviet capital, near the world famous Moscow Conservatory, bore witness to a rather unusual scene. Around 2 p.m. a group of menacing-looking Asian men attacked an Asian youngster. A short but violent fight followed, with exchanges in a language nobody understood, but sometimes the young man was loudly asking for help in Russian. Soon, though, he was overwhelmed by the attackers, who unceremoniously pushed him into a car with diplomatic plates, which promptly sped away.

The KGB learned about the event in no time (it was 1959 Moscow, after all), and soon a KGB officer, Colonel Lebedev, made a phone call to the Foreign Ministry to notify the diplomats that a major complication had just happened. North Korean agents had managed to locate and forcefully kidnap Yi Sang Gu, a post-graduate student at the Moscow School of Music, who had applied for asylum in the Soviet Union and sent a letter very critical of Kim's regime to the Korean Supreme People’s Assembly. By the time of his abduction Yi Sang Gu’s application was being considered, so the violent attack was a major violation of international law. It was especially outrageous that such a violation had been committed by the intelligence service of a country which, in spite of mounting tensions, was still seen as a younger brother of the Soviet Union.