China: Ex-Chinese Envoy to Korea Held for Espionage

Chosun Ilbo ^ | 02/20/07

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ex-Chinese Envoy to Korea Held for Espionage

Former Chinese ambassador to Korea Li Bin

Former Chinese ambassador to Korea Li Bin has been detained and questioned by Chinese police on charges of leaking state secrets, it emerged over the weekend. Li was the envoy in Seoul from September 2001 to August 2005. After returning to China, he was ambassador in charge of North Korean nuclear affairs. Li was suddenly summoned to Beijing last December while serving as deputy mayor of Weihai in China’s eastern Shandong Province and his name disappeared from the list of nominees for deputy mayor.

As a city official, Li at a meeting with Gyeonggi Governor Kim Moon-soo during a visit to Korea last August proposed a “train ferry” linking Korea’s Pyeongtaek and Weihai.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Is this a cover for a purge or a real espionage arrest?

If espionage, what secret did he pass on and to whom?

I have seen this guy showing up at TV. He speaks decent Korean for a foreigner.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[GSlob]

Purge, by definition, is a mass campaign. Probably a regular housecleaning under a boilerplate formula, for which the Chinese are pastmasters. Just like in the Han dynasty times they used to have a broad charge of "disaffection".

[Tamar1973]

Did he go to the Donald Trump school of hair?!

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #4

Now that he is detained, we have to ask his wife to find out about it.:-)