US Navy Seals killed three North Koreans in a botched mission to plant a listening device to spy on Kim Jong-un.

The American commandos used submarines to sneak onto a North Korean beach in the dead of night and install equipment to intercept the dictator’s communications, the New York Times reported.

The 2019 mission, carried out by the team that killed Osama bin Laden, was personally signed off by Donald Trump during tense nuclear talks between his administration and North Korea.

It was designed to give the US the upper hand with intelligence but went spectacularly wrong – leaving three civilians dead.

The mission was interrupted by three sailors diving for shellfish, setting off panic among the US soldiers who fired on them and sunk their bodies before aborting.

The mission remains strictly classified but details have emerged amid renewed tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, after Mr Trump accused Kim this week of conspiring with Russia and China against the US.

In 2018, relations between North Korea and the US appeared to be moving towards a reconciliation, with Pyongyang agreeing to suspend nuclear and weapons testing, and the two countries open to negotiations.

With hopes to gain insight into Kim’s thinking, Mr Trump signed off on the intelligence agencies’ proposal to plant a newly developed electronic device within North Korea to intercept his communications.