A North Korean woman posing as a defector is said to have passed to the North sensitive South Korean military information that she gleaned from military officers she befriended while lecturing on national security at various military bases across South Korea. The woman allegedly traveled to China 14 times and delivered to North Korean intelligence agents the name cards of more than 100 South Korean officers, whose e-mail accounts are said to have been hacked from China. She even tried to lure a South Korean Army major named Kim into going to North Korea. She had met him through a marriage agency after being ordered by North Korean intelligence to lure him to China.
What is even more chilling is that she went around asking about the address of former North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly chairman Hwang Jang-yop, as well as the addresses of the North Korean defectors who met with U.S. President George W. Bush. She is said to have tried to murder two South Korean agents using poisoned needles she received from North Korean intelligence. The allegation recalls the murder by North Korean agents in 1997 of Ri Han-yong, the nephew of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s wife. Ri had defected to South Korea, where the North Korean agents shot him.
Over 13,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea so far. It is not difficult for North Korea to doctor the identities of intelligence agents and send them to South Korea. The woman caught this time had held around 50 lectures at South Korean military installations over the last three years and spread the North Korean claim that its nuclear weapons were for self-defense. A troop information and education officer who lived with the woman handed her a list of North Korean defectors who were giving lectures to South Korean military and did not report her to authorities even after he realized she was a spy. It is simply pathetic to see that a military officer had this type of mentality.
Before East and West Germany reunified, there were more than 20,000 East German spies and communist sympathizers in West Germany. The mood of rapprochement between the two sides had apparently failed to reduce East Germany’s intelligence operations against West Germany. From 2000 to 2005, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service detected 670 orders delivered by North Korea to its agents in the South. That shows just how many agents are probably operating here.
There is no way of knowing how many North Korean agents and sympathizers are roaming the country even at this moment looking for intelligence information. But over the last 10 years, only two North Korean spies have been caught, including Won. South Korean intelligence authorities should wake up and get to work.
