Hwang Jang Yop, who defected 13 years ago, is defiant in the face of threats
North Korean spies disguised as refugees entered South Korea on a mission to assassinate their government’s most prominent defector, prosecutors in Seoul have said.
The two military officers were allegedly ordered to murder Hwang Jang Yop, 87, a former senior member of the North Korean Workers’ Party who has become a hate figure since he defected to Seoul 13 years ago.
Their presence in the South raises questions about other North Korean spies who could be operating undetected on the wrong side of the demilitarised zone.
Kim Myong Ho and Dong Myong Kwan, both 36-year old majors in the Korean People’s Army (KPA), face death sentences after being charged with conspiracy to commit murder and violation of South Korea’s national security law.
They were detected after investigators noticed inconsistencies in their stories during routine questioning following their “defection” via China and Thailand.
According to the prosecution indictment, they confessed to being specially trained members of the KPA’s Reconnaissance Bureau, ordered to track down Mr Hwang, who has been living under 24-hour guard in a secret location since he defected in Beijing in 1997.
They were ordered to report on Mr Hwang’s activities in South Korea and be ready to “slit the betrayer’s throat”.
Mr Hwang was formerly North Korea’s chief ideologue, a close aide to the founding president, the late Kim Il Sung, and the formulator of the country’s national “philosophy” of juche, or self-reliance.
His defection was a profound humiliation to the current North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, and came at a moment of intense crisis when hundreds of thousands, and perhaps, millions of North Koreans were dying of famine.
At the time, many observers of Kim Jong Il’s government predicted its imminent collapse, and Mr Hwang was spoken of as a potential leader of a liberated North Korea in the same way that Ahmad Chalabi, of the Iraqi National Congress, was regarded as a replacement for a deposed Saddam Hussein.
But the regime has held on stubbornly, and Mr Hwang has filled the time by writing books and delivering lectures denouncing his former comrades.
At the time of his defection, Mr Kim was reported to have said: “Hwang turned against the party and its leader… How can we call him a human? He is worse than a dog.” He has been the object of threats from North Korea ever since.
In the latest tirade, a propaganda site named Uriminzokkiri described him this month as “an ugly traitor” who will never be safe.
Only 85 North Koreans defected in the same year as Mr Hwang, but in 2008 there were 2,800.
After several weeks of interrogation by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, they spend three months in a halfway house called Hanawon, where they are taught skills for adapting from one of the world’s poorest and most isolated societies to one of its richest and most cosmopolitan.
With such large numbers arriving, there is a constant fear of infiltration by spies which this new case will only increase. In the past, North Korea has been accused sending death squads to kill a number of defectors, although such claims are often difficult to prove.
In 1996, the South Korean consul in the Russian city of Vladivostok was beaten to death by an unknown assailant outside his home, an attack that was blamed on the North.
A few days after Mr Hwang’s defection, Ri Han Yong, a nephew of Kim Jong Il's late wife, was shot dead in broad daylight, 15 years after defecting to Seoul.
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