Seoul Reveals Arrests of Alleged Spies

The capture of a husband-wife spy team from North Korea has triggered the arrests of four South Koreans working with them as agents, including a professor long known as an influential conservative, authorities announced Thursday.

Relating a tale that sounded more like a movie than real life, officials of the Agency for National Security Planning--South Korea’s equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency--held a news conference Thursday to describe the Oct. 27 arrests of Choi Chung Nam, 35, and his wife, Kang Yun Jung, 28.

They told of her subsequent suicide with a hidden cyanide capsule, and the arrest of Koh Young Bok, 69, an honorary professor of sociology at Seoul National University, active for decades in South Korean security affairs.

Koh’s arrest, combined with statements by the intelligence agency about the range of his contacts, immediately raised fears among some observers of a possible witch hunt for alleged North Korean sympathizers.

The unmasking of Koh as an alleged spy for Communist North Korea also introduced a new element of uncertainty into a hard-fought three-way campaign now underway for South Korea’s Dec. 18 presidential election.

The professor “had contacted many ruling and opposition politicians,” Koh Song Jin, an intelligence agency investigator, said Thursday. “Now we are investigating to see whether some of them were linked to him, but we cannot disclose details of our investigation. . . . Judging from the fact that such a famous and pro-government conservative figure turned out to be a spy, we are really worried that we actually have lots of spies in our society.”

Han Sang Jin, a Seoul National University sociology professor and a former student of Koh Young Bok, noted that “Professor Koh has been quoted as saying [after his arrest] that half of his students were sort of self-created leftists, socialists, and they have already deeply penetrated into every sector of society.”

Whether those remarks were uttered and true, Han noted, they “might provide the government or the intelligence agency or conservative media” with an excuse “to start a kind of ideological cleansing campaign against alleged left-oriented intellectuals working within important sectors of our society. . . . I hope it won’t occur here, but nevertheless I have the kind of impression they might want it.”

Koh Young Bok was allegedly recruited in 1961 by a North Korean agent who brought him a letter from his uncle. According to Korean media, the uncle was also a former Seoul National University professor and had defected to the North in the early days of the 1950-53 Korean War and later taught at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, the North’s capital.

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Also arrested was Sim Chung Woong, 55, a subway official who allegedly told North Korea that it could paralyze Seoul’s subway system by destroying water tanks and electrical facilities. Two of his family members were also detained.

The wide-ranging probe also confirmed that the Feb. 15 murder in suburban Seoul of defector Lee Il Nam--who was also known as Lee Han Young and was a nephew of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s former wife--was an assassination by agents from the North, authorities said.

One task assigned Choi and Kang, after they came south in August, was to find the hiding place of defector Hwang Jang Yop, 72, architect of Pyongyang’s self-reliance ideology, for a similar assassination, authorities said.

Lee’s death, which came three days after Hwang defected to the South Korean Embassy in Beijing, had been viewed as a warning to Hwang by North Korea.

The protection for Hwang, already under tight security, has been further beefed up, investigator Koh said.

There were conflicting reports Thursday on how Choi and Kang came south. While some reports said it was by submarine, a detailed account in the Korea Times, quoting intelligence sources, said they left North Korea on July 30 on a vessel disguised as a fishing boat. They transferred to a high-speed boat to approach Koje Island off South Korea’s southern coast Aug. 2, then changed into wet suits and swam the final 500 yards.

They allegedly contacted Koh Young Bok on Sept. 10. Their other assigned tasks were to gather information on the Dec. 18 election; collect airline, railway and intercity bus schedules; recruit more spies; and get information on a new strain of corn developed by the South’s researchers, the intelligence agency said. North Korea, facing severe food shortages, might be able to benefit from the corn.

Their efforts unraveled after they contacted a leftist leader Oct. 20 to recruit him. He went to authorities. Choi and Kang were arrested, and the leftist leader gave a news conference the next day. But officials embargoed the information, and journalists cooperated.

That gave authorities time to find out about Koh and Sim by interrogating Choi and Kang.