South charges North Korean agents with assassination plot

Hwang Jang-yop

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Two North Koreans who defected to South Korea last November have allegedly admitted to being intelligence officers on a mission to assassinate a North Korean former senior official. The official, Hwang Jang-yop, caused a sensation on both sides of the border when he defected to the South in 1997. A former secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party, Hwang was the North’s primary theorist and the ideological architect of juche, the philosophy of self-reliance, which is North Korea’s officially sanctioned state dogma. Since his defection, the 87-year-old Hwang, who is believed to have ideologically mentored North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, has been living in the South with around-the-clock security protection. The two self-confessed spies, Tong Myong Kwan and Kim Myung Ho, both 36, have allegedly admitted posing as defectors, while in reality being on an assassination mission on behalf of the intelligence unit of the North Korean Ministry of Defense. The two reportedly revealed that they were selected for the mission in 2004 and were trained for six years in spy craft, as well as in 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”. The two reportedly confessed their intelligence links during extensive interrogations by South Korean counterintelligence officials, who suspected them of not being genuine defectors. Interestingly, Hwang Jang-yop, the alleged target of the assassination, met US Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, earlier this month, during a trip to Washington, DC.