BEIJING - This was certainly not one of your normal press briefings. The venue
was unusual - Pyongyang. Last week, North Korea's National Security Agency
invited its propaganda news arm and a handful of foreign media there to
announce a botched espionage plot against its "major military facilities and
places of vital strategic importance".
"The state security organ of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]
arrested moles working for a foreign
intelligence service, a [foreign] agent, and seized their spying equipment,"
North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
The foreign intelligence service had approached some North Korean citizens
traveling abroad with "money, sexual gratification and blackmail" and turned
them into its spies, National Security Agency spokesman Li Su-gil said at the
briefing, held at the People's Palace of Culture in Pyongyang on Wednesday.
According to Lee, the foreign intelligence body had these recruits undergo an
anti-communist brainwashing session and taught them how to collect intelligence
data as well as how to use electronic equipment for spying.
"Their duty was also to collect information on the ideological tendencies of
the [North Korean] people and, at the same time, to create an illusion about
the 'free world' among some key officials and lure them out to third
countries," the KCNA said.
Pyongyang said the foreign intelligence service had sent its agent to North
Korea posing as a businessman and commanded the spy activities. But "the
counterespionage officers of the DPRK who had watched every movement of the
enemy arrested them on the spot while they were exchanging the data", the KCNA
said.
"This is the first time North Korea has announced such news publicly," said Li
Dunqiu, a well-known Chinese government analyst on North Korea. Li, however,
politely declined to discuss the issue further, citing its sensitivity.
Yoo Ho-yeol, professor of Korean politics and foreign policy at Korea
University, said, "Not only did they announce it publicly, but the press
briefing also included very concrete details. Further, the spokesman of the
secretive National Security Service made the announcement himself. That's
unusual."
At the security agency's press conference, spokesman Lee went into details
about the case, including that the spies had used the Global Positioning System
and Sony transmission equipment, and then took questions from reporters. The
whole scene was staged very much like a press conference.
China's Xinhua news agency aired the news first. There are a handful of foreign
reporters in North Korea, including from China and Russia. Pyongyang also has a
bureau for the television arm of the Associated Press, where locally hired
employees transmit television footage to the that media agency. Reporters with
Japan's Kyoto news agency are also allowed to visit Pyongyang roughly once
every two months.
At the press briefing, neither the identity of the spy nor his nationality was
disclosed. The fact that North Korea didn't name the country was meant "to warn
any country that attempts to overthrow the regime", said Koh Yoo-hwan, a
professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.
"As North Korea is slowly opening up to the outside world, more and more
foreign humanitarian-aid organizations and businessmen are visiting North Korea
these days. That means more North Koreans are meeting foreigners," Koh said.
"That, however, poses a threat to the North. So the announcement has two
purposes. On one hand, it was meant to overhaul its internal system, and on the
other hand, it was an expression of will to let the world know that it won't
allow any outside attempt to overthrow the regime."
Yoo concurred with Koh: "North Korea is already on a track to open up to the
outside world. In the process, there will be increased contact between North
Koreans and foreigners. In this transitional period, Pyongyang feels the need
to strengthen its internal supervision."
Li Su-gil warned that although on the surface there has been an improvement of
relations between North Korea and other countries, "There is also an
intensifying foreign intelligence effort to oppose our system and our people.
That is happening even when there are dialogue and negotiation under way.
Especially, the dark tentacles of the foreign intelligence agencies are
focusing on our military facilities and gathering information necessary for
preemptive strikes."
Yoo, who visited North Korea early last month, said the country appears
somewhat edgy during this "opening-up" period. "In my previous visits, they had
allowed me to take pictures freely, but this time they wouldn't. They only
allowed me to take pictures at tourist spots and at certain angles.
"North Korea knows that when foreigners take pictures, the pictures can be
circulated in the outside world. So they carefully choose what to show and what
not to show to the outside world. I got the feeling that they have become much
more sensitive on that lately," Yoo said.
Nonetheless, Yoo believes that the fact that North Korea went public about the
case is a departure from its past secretive practices. "Spy activities in any
country are subject to legal punishment, including in the US. Although North
Korea is a somewhat peculiar country, it also has relevant laws. In a sense, it
is using the tools used by the international community."
Yoo added that North Korea is expected to do a follow-up announcement and
disclose the identity of the spy and the prison term he will receive.
While Pyongyang keeps the identity of the spy in the dark, Professor Yoo
believes he is very likely Japanese. "Only certain nationalities in the world
can enter North Korea relatively easily and frequently. There are Chinese and
Russians. If the spy were from one of these countries, given that they are
ideological allies to North Korea, Pyongyang would have resolved it quietly."
According to Yoo, using the media is a strategy publicly to pressure the
country from which the spy came. And the timing of Pyongyang's announcement is
the key: it came on the same day North Korea started normalization negotiations
with Japan in Ulan Bator.
At the negotiation, North Korea demanded Japanese compensation for its past
occupation of the Korean Peninsula and the lifting of economic sanctions, while
Japan demanded a full account of 17 of its nationals allegedly kidnapped by
North Korea some three decades ago.
The talks, however, ended without a breakthrough. Over the weekend, Japan
announced that it would extend economic sanctions on North Korea for another
six months.
Professor Yoo did not raise the possibility of the spy being a South Korean.
Many South Korean business people travel to the North via China. North Korea is
scheduled to hold a summit with the South early next month.
North Korea's past nabbing of foreign spies includes citizens from the US and
Japan, and Chinese of Korean descent.
Koh of Dongguk University said the very fact that the leaders of the two Koreas
meet is an achievement in its own right, adding that the meeting will yield
some "meaningful results".
"It's a meeting that the top leader of North Korea himself attends. If it
doesn't bear any fruit, then it will also become a burden for Kim Jong-il," Koh
said.
Koh reasons that if Kim doesn't score major achievements at the summit, it will
corner the Dear Leader politically, because it will give more political
leverage to the hardline military faction that opposes engagement with South
Korea.
Yoo disagreed. "The timing [of the summit] is very bad. It comes right before
the presidential election in South Korea. It will be a gamble if the Seoul
government tries to use the summit to influence the election outcome. For that
to happen, North Korea has to make some surprising decisions, including those
related to the six-party talks [on nuclear disarmament]. Seoul, in response,
will pledge massive economic aid.
"But North Korea knows well that whatever promises the current South Korean
government makes, it is up to the next administration to decide whether to
carry them out. So there is this uncertainty. I think the two sides approach
the summit with a relatively low expectation."
Sunny Lee is a writer/journalist based in Beijing, where he has lived for
five years. A native of South Korea, Lee is a graduate of Harvard University
and Beijing Foreign Studies University.
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