Wednesday's indictment of a woman on espionage charges, the first North Korean defector to be arrested for allegedly violating the National Security Law, has shocked the country. There has been speculation that some North Korean agents might have settled in South Korea under the guise of being refugees and spied for the communist country. This speculation could have a high possibility of being proven if a court accepts the joint investigation results by the prosecution, police, the military and the state intelligence agency.
Investigators identified the suspect as Won Jeong-hwa, a 34-year-old North Korean defector. They quoted her as confessing that she was a trained spy for the North. She came to the South in 2001, posing as a Korean-Chinese person and married a South Korean. Later, she registered as a defector from the North. She ran a trading firm and frequently traveled to China, where she passed intelligence she gathered in the South on to North Korean operatives. Her mission was to find the whereabouts of North Korean defectors, including Hwang Jang-yop, the former secretary of the Workers' Party, who was a key architect of the North's Juche (self-reliance) theory.
She was also ordered to poison some South Korean agents and collect information about South Korea's major public facilities and military installations. What's surprising is that she worked as a lecturer on anti-communism at military camps across the country by taking advantage of her status as a defector. Won allegedly maintained romantic relations with three to four military officers, and even became a lover of an army first lieutenant identified as Hwang, 27, who was also arrested for cooperating in her espionage activities.
How could such a North Korean agent give a lecture to South Korean solders? How could the officers be fooled into helping Won play a spy drama? Hwang even failed to report the case to the authorities although he knew her lover was a North Korean agent. The officers lacked discipline and their involvement in the case posed a grave threat to national defense and security. The authorities should take radical measures to avoid a recurrence.
Another problems is that the government, law enforcement agencies, the intelligence service and the military have failed to properly manage North Korean refugees settling here. The poor management made it possible for Won to infiltrate the South and commence her mission. In early 2002, she went on a two-month resettlement program at Hanawon, a state education center for defectors from the North. But the authorities failed to uncover her true identity.
The government has been criticized for not taking appropriate measures to protect defectors, advocate their human rights, and help them find jobs and lead a decent life in a capitalist society. Many people still remember that a North Korean agent killed Lee Han-young in 1997, a nephew of Kim Jong-il's late wife Sung Hye-rim, who defected to the South in 1982. The government must ensure the personal security of the defectors. It also should do its best to ferret out potential spies among them. No South Koreans want to see another North Korean spy posing as a defector or anybody else.