Pro-North Korean spy case rings alarm bells

(Yonhap Editorial) SEOUL, Aug. 25 (Yonhap) -- The prosecution's announcement of its investigation into 10 South Koreans who worked as North Korean spies is simply shocking. Prosecutors said on Thursday they have investigated 10 South Koreans who allegedly served as North Korean operatives for more than a decade, leaking political and military secrets in the latest in a long series of espionage cases. Operating in an underground anti-state organization called Wangjaesan, the name of a "holy" North Korean mountain, they allegedly dug up current political and military information and reported it to the North Korean intelligence agency, the Seoul District Prosecutors' Office said. The prosecution indicted five people, including a 48-year-old man surnamed Kim, who acted as the ringleader, on charges of forming the spy group and engaging in espionage in violation of the National Security Law. The five others are currently being questioned without physical detention. According to the prosecution, Wangjaesan is an organization devoted to a communist revolution in South Korea under North Korea's instructions. Kim, according to prosecutors, is believed to have met in person with North Korean founder Kim Il-sung in August 1993 and received from him an order to establish a South Korean unit that would assist the North in its attempts to "revolutionize" the South. The goal was to disseminate and instill communist ideas among South Koreans, the prosecution said. Kim, formerly a member of a pro-North Korean organization during the 1980s, returned to the South and employed his schoolmates to become North Korean spies before finally launching the underground organization in March 2001, the office noted. Kim and the other four members were given code names from North Korea and submitted oaths pledging their loyalty to North Korea. They gathered information for Pyongyang on the latest South Korean political affairs, key U.S. military bases in the South as well as military strategies to report it to Pyongyang. What is more shocking is that the organization succeeded in infiltrating the South Korean political community. One of the five indicted, surnamed Lee, found employment as a secretary for former liberal party lawmaker Lim Chae-jung, who chaired the National Assembly from 2006-08. Lee even applied in vain to become a candidate of the Democratic Party for the parliamentary election in 2008. Among the five people who were being questioned without physical detention are members of the minor opposition Democratic Labor Party. It is deplorable that the opposition parties denounce the prosecution, claiming that it is fabricating the spy case to attack liberal opposition parties. The case also reveals that our society's security consciousness has become blunt. We expect the prosecution to investigate incidents that put our national security in peril, including the work of pro-North Korean forces. But, as a matter of course, prosecutors must carry out such investigations on the basis of laws and principles.