NK spy disguised as defector to stand trial

A North Korean spy agent was detained and indicted Tuesday after entering South Korea posing as a defector seeking shelter in the country, prosecutors said.

The spy, whose identity was withheld, was arrested after falsely defecting to South Korea via a third country in March with a mission to gather information on defectors from North Korea.

Before coming to the South, the man had stayed in China since the early 2000s engaging in espionage activities, including tracking down North Korea defectors hiding there, according to prosecutors.

They say the North Korean, during questioning by police and the state intelligence service, initially claimed that he fled his country to escape poverty. He, however, later confessed that he is a spy agent from the North's top intelligence agency, the State Security Department, the prosecutors said.

Noticeably, he had originally been assigned to launch a terrorist attack against Kim Jong-nam, a half-brother of the North's leader Kim Jong-un, prosecutors said.

The North's spy agency reportedly ordered the spy to simply injure Kim in a staged traffic accident since killing him could lead to an international problem, they added. In July 2010, the spy paid a taxi driver to carry out the attack, but the mission never happened as the eldest son of North Korea's late leader Kim Jong-il never entered China.

Kim, believed to be in his early 40s, was last reported to be staying in Macao in February of this year.

The spy entered Seoul after he had been instructed to approach a North Korean defector heading an activist group for many other defectors in the South, prosecutors said.

The spy also confessed that his mission in South Korea was to report on the large number of defectors already in the country and win them over to return to the North, they added.

South Korea is currently home to more than 24,000 North Korean defectors. (Yonhap)