[Pelefaifs]

May 23, 2010
N.Korean female spy arrested

SEOUL - SOUTH KOREAN authorities have arrested a North Korean female spy who posed as a refugee in order to obtain classified information on Seoul's subway system, a news report said on Sunday.

The information could be used for terrorist attacks, Seoul's Yonhap news agency said, citing the National Intelligence Service and Seoul prosecutors. The 36-year-old woman, known only by her family name Kim, entered South Korea via China and Laos in September 2009, passing herself off as a North Korean defector, Yonhap said.

Kim obtained the classified information, including a list of emergency contacts for Seoul subway staff, from a 52-year-old former subway employee named only as Oh and handed it over to Pyongyang, it said.

Oh, who met Kim online and later became her lover, was also arrested for leaking classified documents, the report added. Kim had run a cosmetics store and travel agency in China's Hunan Province to secure personal data on South Korean tourists for a number of years before slipping into South Korea posing as a refugee, it said.

The National Intelligence Service declined to comment and officials at the Seoul prosecutors' office handling the case were not immediately available.

Cross-border relations have worsened after a South Korean warship sank in what Seoul says was a North Korean torpedo attack near a tense sea border. The two Koreas are still technically at war since the 1950-1953 conflict ended in a fragile armistice. -- AFP