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June 02,2012 | Korea JoongAng Daily

A North Korean “honeytrap” spy was arrested while attempting to infiltrate South Korea by posing
as a defector, intelligence authorities told the JoongAng Ilbo Thursday. The arrest marked the third
known case of a female North Korean agent captured in the South after coming here by posing as a
defector. The first case was reported in 2008 and the second in 2010.

The National Intelligence Service confirmed that a 46-year-old North Korea defector who came to South
Korea through Thailand at the end of last year was in fact an agent sent by Pyongyang. The woman,
known as Lee Gyeong-ae, was arrested earlier this month.



Lee told the South Korean authorities that she had escaped from the North and lived in China with
a South Korean man. After he returned home, she decided to come to the South through a
middleman who often arranges trips for defectors.

The authorities, however, discovered inconsistencies in her testimony and many of her accounts
about North Korea were different from their intelligence. After interrogation, she confessed that
she was an agent sent by the National Security Agency.

Lee received her spy training at the National Security Agency in early 2000 and was dispatched to
China. Her main role was money laundering of counterfeit U.S. dollar bills into Chinese
yuan.

Lee was also accused of luring a former North Korean man to China to investigate intelligence that
he was linked to the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. The man was a former North
Korean who defected to the South and then moved to the United States.