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The Seoul Central District Court on Monday convicted Jang Min-ho, a 45-year-old naturalized American citizen, for playing a key role in handing over state secrets to North Korean agents and setting up meetings between those agents and four other South Koreans, who were also convicted of espionage. The five were sentenced to between four to nine years in prison. The court had found them guilty on most counts brought against them by the prosecution, including monitoring, gathering and handing over top national secrets, as well as associating and communicating with North Korean agents.
The defendants handed over to North Korean agents information such as status reports of Democratic Labor Party members and briefings on the selection of a single presidential candidate by liberal political factions in 2002, which the court deemed as classified information. But the court ruled that the convicted individuals had ¡°conducted their activities individually,¡± rather than in an organized manner, finding them innocent of charges of forming a spy ring. Therefore, the court did not rule them as being a group that benefited the enemy.
The spy ring dubbed ¡°Ilsimhoe¡± was a pro-North Korean group that Jang formed with the other members. Jang, a former South Korean activist turned U.S. citizen and businessman, received orders from North Korea in 2002 to recruit fellow activist Lee Jung-hun, a 44-year-old member of the central committee of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), Choi Ki-young, former deputy secretary-general of the DLP, Lee Jin-gang, a 44-year-old office worker and Sohn Jung-mok, a 42-year-old businessman. Jang and the other members of the group handed over dozens of classified documents to North Korea.
When the head of South Korea¡¯s National Intelligence Service (NIS) in October called the Ilsimhoe incident a ¡°shocking¡± case of North Korean espionage, the former Uri Party chairman accused the intelligence chief of ¡°inappropriate conduct.¡± One Uri lawmaker, who traces his roots to social activist groups, even accused the NIS of fabricating the accusations in order to justify its existence. The DLP, which saw its former and incumbent officials indicted, also at one time insisted the accusations were fabricated. DLP members even stormed the courtroom, accusing the judge and prosecutor of being ¡°lackeys of U.S. imperialists¡± and ¡°trash sucking the blood of the Korean masses.¡± The court¡¯s ruling has in one sense found the supporters of the Ilsimhoe, including members of the Uri party and DLP, guilty too.
In its ruling, the court said Jang had decided to create a pro-North Korean group within the DLP and civic groups and persistently approached South Korean figures. The court said even Lee Jin-gang, the office worker, tried to recruit members from civic groups. The court had acknowledged the possibility that North Korean agents had tried to recruit members from South Korean civic groups and political camps to form more Ilsimhoe-type cells. South Korean intelligence officials had vowed to continue their investigation, revealing the existence of four smaller cells reporting to Ilsimhoe. Several months have passed, but no progress has been made.
The court ruled that South Korea¡¯s National Security Law, whose aim is to secure the freedom and continued existence of the nation, still applied to modern South Korean society. The court once again recognized the necessity of the National Security Law, which the president and the Uri Party had sought to abolish.
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