[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

[Brewpralgar]

May 24, 2010
Spy used sex for information

SEOUL - A FEMALE North Korean spy arrested last week had used sex to secure sensitive information on Seoul's subway system, a South Korean prosecutor said on Monday. The 36-year-old identified only as Kim was arrested on Friday, eight months after she entered South Korea via China and Laos in the guise of a defector, Oh Se-In, a deputy chief prosecutor, told AFP. She obtained information, including a list of emergency contacts for Seoul subway staff, from a 52-year-old former subway employee and handed it over to Pyongyang, he said. 'The information passed on is not a classified military secret. However, North Korea can use such information for terrorist attacks,' Mr Oh said.

'Passing key information on our subway system to North Korea is a violation of our national security law.' In China, the spy had run a cosmetics store and travel agency to secure personal data on South Korean tourists, he said. The former subway employee, who met Kim online and visited China in 2006 to become her lover, was also arrested on charges of violating the security law, the prosecutor said. 'The spy had used sex to obtain information,' he said, comparing Kim to Won Jeong-Hwa, a female North Korean spy who was arrested and jailed for five years in 2008. Won, 36, had admitted to having sexual relations with a South Korean army officer to secure military secrets. -- AFP

[Brewpralgar]

S.Korea opts not to prosecute N.Korean female spy

2010-07-08 13:45

SEOUL, Thursday 8 July 2010 (AFP) - South Korean prosecutors will not charge a woman forced to spy for North Korea because she is in poor health and cooperated with investigators, a spokesman said. The 36-year-old identified only as Kim was arrested in May for allegedly obtaining classified information on Seoul's subway system from a male employee in return for providing him with sexual services.

Her arrest came eight months after she entered South Korea via China and Laos in the guise of a defector. The subway employee, who first met Kim online when she was operating a travel agency in China in 2006 and 2007, has been charged with espionage. "Prosecution authorities have decided not to indict Kim as she has clearly expressed her intention to shift loyalty to the South and she was in poor health," the Seoul central district prosecution office spokesman told AFP.

She needs a liver transplant, he said. Authorities also took into account the fact that she was forced into espionage to avoid punishment for losing her communist party membership card on a train in 1997 in North Korea. "She became disillusioned with the North after she arrived in the South," a prosecution source was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency. "We expect her to cooperate well not only in her own case but in other spy cases as well."

Spies can in theory face the death sentence but are sometimes treated leniently if they renounce the North's regime and cooperate. A court last week passed 10-year prison sentences on two North Korean agents who posed as fugitives from the communist state in a bid to assassinate a top-ranking defector. The sentence was less than prosecutors had sought. The judge said he took their cooperation into account.

A female North Korean agent who bombed a South Korean airliner in 1987 with the loss of 115 lives was sentenced to death but later pardoned. She married and settled in the South, and has spoken out against the Pyongyang regime.