cryptogon.com

Prosecutors claimed Won Jeong-Hwa, 35, entered South Korea posing as a refugee when in fact she was a spy with handlers in Pyongyang.

But the defence painted a different picture of Won, who has confessed and signed a pledge of repentance and loyalty to South Korea.

The court heard how she began her career as a spy after falling into the hands of the North’s secret services and being “brainwashed.” She was arrested for stealing zinc, a scrap metal which North Koreans often smuggle into China in return for food.

Fearful for her life, she claimed in her defence that she complied with her orders only to protect her family, who would now be at grave risk and possible execution.

A tearful Won had pleaded for leniency at a previous hearing.

“I wanted to turn myself in but I just could not because of fears for my relatives in the North,” she said in a choking voice.

“I repent my past activities. I just want a chance to live again with my daughter in South Korea.”

Investigators said Won had served jail time for theft in the North and feared possible execution for another theft.

She fled to northeast China but returned home and in 1998 became a spy for the North’s espionage agency.

Her first task was to arrange the kidnap of North Korean defectors in China, they said.

“In China, I earnestly carried out various missions, helping kidnapping North Korean defectors and South Koreans and engaging in drug trafficking,” Won told the court.

In 2001 she entered South Korea and lived as a housewife and mother, having married a South Korean businessmen, with whom she had a daughter, now seven.

Meanwhile, she sought out army officers in accordance with her orders from Pyongyang — photographs and business cards belonging to 23 were found in her belongings. She slept with them and eventually became the long-term lover of one, Captain Hwang.

She used him to obtain secret information, according to evidence produced at her trial.

This included details of military installations, weapons systems and lists of defectors. Soon, she was commissioned to find Hwang Jang-yop, the North’s highest-ranking defector who lives under guard in the South, and kill two South Korean agents with a poisoned needle. The plot did not go ahead.

She was also convicted of taking part in the kidnapping of a South Korean businessman in China, who was smuggled into the North.

Perhaps the oddest feature of her case is how she first aroused suspicion. She had been hired to talk to South Korean soldiers of the evils of life in the North. Touring military bases provided good cover for her activities. But in her 33rd lecture she loosed a volley of pro-Pyongyang propaganda.