Posted on 06/29/2010 2:24:12 AM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
South Korea has decided to strengthen scrutinizing of North Korean asylum-seekers as spies from the communist country are attempting to enter the South pretending to be refugees.
"We will conduct tighter screening," said an official at the National Intelligence Service.
The move comes after two North Korean agents — both majors in the army's reconnaissance bureau — were arrested in April on charges of attempting to assassinate Hwang Jang-Yop, a high-ranking North Korean defector who has led anti-North campaigns.
All North Koreans who entered the South undergo questioning by South Korea's intelligence agency service for up to 90 days. But the government will extend the vetting period to as much as 180 days to find out any North Korean spies disguised as defectors, according to the Unification Ministry.
“The longer questioning period will help find out any North Korean agents,” a ministry official said.
The two spies entered South Korea separately in January and February through China and Thailand by posing as asylum-seekers. The North's spy agency issued a directive instructing the two "never to allow Hwang to die a natural death," Seoul prosecutors said.
Defectors who have re-settled in Seoul said the North Korean officers were two among "quite a few spies" who have entered the South pretending to be asylum-seekers, noting the vetting period is "too short" and "too loose" to uncover spies.
In 2008, a North Korean female spy disguised as a refugee — Won Jeong-Hwa — was arrested, but it was only the second such case discovered in South Korea during the previous 10 years, a time in which liberal presidents in Seoul had embraced the "sunshine" policy of peaceful engagement with the North.
In 2006, five spies, including one Korean-American businessman, were arrested.
(Excerpt) Read more at east-asia-intel.com ...
Ping
We constnatly hear of the North Koreans torpedoing the Souths ship, using spies to defect and take out real defectors, and generally hasseling the South.
We seldom hear of the South doing likewise except for releasing baloons with propaganda or raidios in to the North. Does the South nip at the Norths heels too?
They have these gigantic loud speakers that was recently put up by the ROKA. Of course, the North threatened war.
The South and North use to have those loud speakers to blast propaganda back and forth along the border.
When the South started kissing up to the North trying to temper their attitudes the systems went silent.
Just since the current group, a much more hard line has been undertaken and the loud speaker system is again blaring.
Back in 1974 I went up to the border area to see for myself and heard them then.
Pretty tense place even back then.
The tension between North and South is a billion times worse. Its going to get even more tense when the US Navy and the South Korean military begin their military exercises in July.
Ping
The North has been doing this stuff for decades secure in the knowledge that nothing will happen to them. Anyone remember them blowing up that passenger jet in the 80s? Sadly because their economy is walled off from everyone except China and because they have a billion weapons pointed right at Seoul there is very little leverage that anyone other than China could exercise against them.
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