An appeals court in Seoul has upheld the conviction of a South Korean member of a spy cell that planned to assassinate the most senior North Korean defector to the South. The man, identified in media reports only by his last name, Park, is a South Korean citizen who allegedly helped a North Korean spy cell “based in China” plan the assassination of Hwang Jang-yop. In 1997, Hwang caused a sensation on both sides of the border when he defected to the South. A former secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party, Hwang was Pyongyang’s primary theorist and the ideological architect of juche, the philosophy of self-reliance, which is North Korea’s officially sanctioned state dogma. He was also believed to have ideologically mentored North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il, the father of the country’s current Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un. Until his death from heart failure in April 2010, Hwang, had been living in the South with around-the-clock security protection.
In October 2010, a few months before
Hwang’s death, South Korean authorities revealed that two self-confessed
North Korean spies, Tong Myong Kwan and Kim Myung Ho, had allegedly
admitted to posing as defectors. Seoul said that Tong and Kim, who were
both 36 at the time, were on an assassination mission assigned to them
by the intelligence unit of the North Korean Ministry of Defense. The
two reportedly stated under interrogation that they were selected for
the mission in 2004 and were trained for six years in spy trade craft,
as well as techniques of assimilating in life in South Korea, which
apparently included “watching South Korean soap operas to gain a better
understanding of South Korean society”.
At the time of Tong and Kim’s arrest,
South Korean authorities had stated that the two alleged North Korean
spies had been assisted by at least two South Korean citizens. One has
never been named. The other, Park, was indicted last year of providing
logistical support to foreign spies who were plotting to kill Hwang, in
return for ₩25 million ($21,000). His legal team appealed the sentence,
saying he had been framed by the North Koreans. But on Tuesday, the
Seoul High Court rejected the Park’s appeal and upheld his original 3-year jail sentence.
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