Monthly Archives: December 2015

Aunt of Kim Jong Un sues North Korean defectors

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Kim Jong-Un’s aunt is suing three North Korean defectors after they accused her of having plastic surgery and managing a secret fund of cash for the secretive state’s former leader, Kim Jong-Il.

The younger sister of Kim’s mother, Ko Yong-Suk, who looked after Kim for years when he was at school in Switzerland, claimed asylum in the United States in 1998 with her husband.

The suit was filed on her behalf by Ko’s Seoul-based lawyer. Ko is seeking a total of 60 million won ($51,900) for remarks the defectors made on South Korean TV talk shows between 2013 and 2014. “The defectors made groundless remarks without really knowing about her life,” her lawyer said.

However, one of the defendants, An Chan-il, who fled to South Korea in 1979 and now heads a private-think tank on North Korea, said he had merely repeated what had been reported in media. He added he and one of the other defendants planned to file a counter-suit for libel.

The three defectors named in the suit include a former North Korean agent, the son-in-law of a former North Korean prime minister and an ex-diplomat.

[Daily Mail]

How South Korea screens North Korean refugees

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South Korea has spent decades screening refugees from its hostile northern neighbor but some enemy agents manage to get through, underlining the challenges Western nations face in dealing with a far larger influx of people escaping the war in Syria.

Seoul uses lie detectors, interrogation and a screening process that includes keeping people in solitary confinement to catch North Korean agents among genuine asylum seekers.

Still, between 2003 and 2013, of the 49 North Korean spies apprehended in the South, 21 entered the country posing as refugees, according to the country’s justice ministry.

“The question of spies slipping through is always a problem, and we need to make the process more meticulous and advanced,” said Shin Kyung-min, the ranking opposition member of the South Korean parliament’s intelligence committee. “But it’s not like we can stop taking in North Korean defectors because of that,” Shin told Reuters.

Around 1,000 North Koreans defect to the South every year and are held for up to 180 days while they are screened. If they clear that, the refugees are transferred to a resettlement complex, which they cannot leave, for another 12 weeks to help them adjust to life in the South.

New North Korean arrivals to the South, who typically enter via a third country, are brought to a facility in Siheung on the southern outskirts of Seoul. There, they are separated for questioning on their backgrounds and lives in the North, spending time in solitary but comfortable rooms.

No exception is made for families or children, who are taken from their parents and face similar questioning, according to a civic group.   Read more

[Reuters]

A North Korean refugee’s experience being interrogated by South Korea

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“It was like writing my autobiography,” said a 59-year-old female defector who spent three months at the South Korean interrogation center from 2012 and asked that she not be named because she is not supposed to talk about the process.

“I talked about my whole life in chronological order and got checked,” she told Reuters.

“I came here to change my life so there was nothing that I was afraid of.”

Lie detectors are used as a basic tool, as many defectors from the isolated and impoverished North are undocumented, a former National Intelligence Service official said.

A typical interrogation starts with the defector’s address, and the program has built a database with locations, names and other details to compare with their story. The program has succeeded in weeding out about 120 bogus defectors and 14 spies, local media reports last year said, citing intelligence officials. Fake defectors are believed mainly to consist of ethnic Korean citizens of mainland China. The numbers could not be independently verified.

Those found not to be North Korean defectors are deported, while those determined to be spies are prosecuted, according to South Korean authorities.    Read more

[Reuters]

North Korea sending its spies south

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Pyongyang is believed to have begun sending spies posing as defectors to the South in the late 1990s when large batches of refugees fled a massive, deadly famine.

Before that, South Korea occasionally caught armed spies who had infiltrated from across the militarized border, or via small submarines in the dark of night. Some confrontations between North Korean agents and South Korean security forces ended in deadly gunfights.

“It is not an easy process because they are disguised as refugees, highly trained, dispatched by counter-South espionage agencies,” said Jun Ok-hyun, a former deputy director of South Korea’s spy agency who retired in 2009.

“The more defectors come, the stronger the review process should be because it could be easier for North Korea to send spies as fake refugees,” he told Reuters.

When defectors leave the resettlement center and move into the general population, police officers are assigned to protect and manage them, according to police officials who declined to elaborate.

[Reuters]