Court Sentences NK Spy to 5 Years in Prison
By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
Female North Korean spy Won Jeong-hwa, who disguised herself as a defector, was sentenced to five years in prison, Wednesday.
Suwon District Court sentenced her to five years in prison for collecting national secrets and relaying them to North Korea.
``Her espionage gravely jeopardized national security,'' Presiding Judge Shin Young-seok said in the ruling. ``We took into account the fact that she had pled guilty and felt remorse for her past activities in metering out her sentence,'' the judge added.
Prior to the ruling, Won submitted self-written statements twice to the court, in which she pled guilty to all charges against her and repented her past activities as a spy. She also sent a written conversion to South Korean authorities.
The 34-year-old landed in the South in 2001 after pretending to be an ethnic Korean-Chinese and marrying a South Korean businessman in China. She then reported herself a North Korean defector and pretended to be an anti-communism activist, giving lectures at military camps nationwide. She mainly obtained military and national secrets from Army officers with whom she had sexual relations. She was arrested Aug. 27.
North Korea last month claimed that Seoul fabricated the case to suppress progressive groups and deflect blame for deteriorating inter-Korean relations.