By Kim Bo-eun
The government has decided to beef up the screening process used for North Korean defectors, following a recent incident in which one such person working for the Seoul municipal government was arrested on espionage charges.
“We need to embrace the 24,000 North Korean defectors here, but if there are any spies among them it can put national security at serious risk," said an official at Ministry of Public Administration and Security, Wednesday. “Therefore a thorough verification process is absolutely necessary,” he said.
There are currently 12 defectors working at central government agencies and 40 at municipal and provincial authorities. They are either regular or contract workers and their work ranges from cleaning, nursing and counseling defectors to monitoring surveillance cameras inside buildings.
The number of defectors working for the government has increased, following revisions to the Civil Service Law between 2011 and 2012 to allow for special recruitment of defectors.
However, the government has been expressing concern about having them counsel other defectors, because it can put personal information at risk.
A defector surnamed Yoo who had been working for the Seoul municipal government was arrested Monday for handing over information on some 10,000 defectors.
Yoo had served as an employee of the department for North Korean defectors there since June 2011. He allegedly leaked names and residential addresses as well as other information.
This is the first time a defector-turned-civil servant was caught engaging in spying activities, according to the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
Investigations showed that he was originally from China, not North Korea, as he had claimed when he obtained South Korean citizenship as a North Korean defector.
They also revealed that Yoo had not graduated from medical school in the North as claimed, but from a regular school in China.
In addition, Yoo had changed his residential registration number twice. Defectors from the North can only change their registration number once, according to the law.
“There is no way to verify the defectors a second time once they have passed the inspection of documents at the unification ministry and local centers for defectors,” said the ministry official.
“Although the government agencies and local government institutions do not assign work to defectors which could put national security at risk, a more rigorous verification system is definitely needed,” he said.
"The government ministries currently have a procedure for questioning the defectors to make sure there are no spies, but it is difficult to find those who engage in such activities after they have passed the questioning and examining of documents," said an official at the NIS. "There may possibly be more spies among the defectors currently working for the government."
A unification ministry official also said that the ministry would make efforts to plug loopholes in the current system.