YONHAP NEWS

Military to reinforce watch against N. Korean spies

   By Byun Duk-kun
SEOUL, April 23 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's defense intelligence agency will strengthen its efforts to round up widespread North Korean agents in the country, a ranking military intelligence official said Wednesday.

   The official at the Defense Security Command (DSC) refused to provide a number of North Korean spies believed to be working in the country, but officials at the defense intelligence branch said the number has not been reduced in recent years though reports of North Korean agents being arrested have become rare.

   "That surely is one of the fields we must reinforce our efforts in," the DSC official said while asking not to be identified. "There have been many incidents in history where a few spies led to the collapse of a nation."
About 4,500 North Korean spies have been arrested since the country was founded in 1948, DSC officials said. Of the total, some 2,000 were arrested by the military.

   The officials at the intelligence command said the number of arrests of North Korean spies has remained steady over the years, but said reports of such incidents have become rare because the command had been gagged under the former liberal administrations of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, both of whom sought to improve ties with communist North Korea.

   Former President Kim held the first-ever inter-Korean summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang in 2002, which was repeated last year by Roh.

   North Korea's efforts to infiltrate the South were highlighted in 1996 when a 360-ton submarine, carrying 26 spies and crew members, was found stranded off the coast of eastern Gangwon Province.

   Eleven of them were shortly found dead near the submarine in what was believed a collective suicide while 13 others were later killed on the run and two arrested.

   Another North Korean submarine was found stranded in the East Sea in 1998 with nine bodies of armed North Korean agents inside.

   bdk@yna.co.kr
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