A South Korean man was Monday arrested on charges of hunting North Korean defectors in China and sending them back to their communist homeland at the instruction of Pyongyang.
The Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office said that the man, identified only by his surname Kim, is also accused of collecting information on people helping North Korean defectors as well as military information for the North.
The 55-year-old was won over by a North Korean agent while staying illegally in China in the late 1990s, visited Pyongyang in 2000 for spy training, and was dispatched back to China as an agent hunting defectors, prosecutors said.
Kim recently returned to South Korea after an accomplice was arrested by Chinese police and jailed. Prosecutors took him into custody upon arrival.