티스토리 뷰
"Swiri," the film about a female North Korean spy, was so popular when it was screened in 1999 that it attracted as 2.45 million viewers. Won Jeong-hwa, who has been arrested for posing as a defector while spying for the North, was doing so just when the film was being shown. Had she seen it?
Trained as an agent by the North's Ministry of Public Security and the State Security Department, Won was dispatched to China in 1998. She allegedly helped abduct 100-odd North Korean refugees and seven South Koreans and dispatch them to the North. Infiltrating South Korea in 2001 posing as a defector, she transmitted to the North information on some 100 military officers and attempted to induce an army major, identified as Kim, to defect to the North. The woman was also alleged to have been told to find out the whereabouts of Hwang Jang-yup, a former secretary of the North Korean Worker's Party who fled to the South in 1997, and of South Korean intelligence agents engaged in espionage operations, and to assassinate some of them.
The spy incident is shocking in two respects. To begin with, North Korea has not given up terrorism despite its endeavors to get removed from the list of states sponsoring terrorism. Pyongyang killed Choi Duck-keun, a consul at the South Korean Consulate-General in Vladivostok, in 1996, and assassinated Ri Han-yong, a nephew of Kim Jong-il's wife in broad daylight in 1997. As the latest incident, the North is still abducting South Koreans in China and has not given up attempts to assassinate figures like Hwang.
I urge the government to demand that the U.S. administration put off removing North Korea from the list of states sponsoring terrorism until the North apologizes for the abductions and assassinations. The U.S. now links the delisting issue to the nuclear problem. The spy incident calls for delaying the delisting until it is ascertained the North has no intent of resorting to terror.
What is equally shocking is how seriously our security consciousness with regard to the North has been slipping in the past 10 years under the Sunshine Policy. Military information and education officers in the military constitute the frontline of ideological warfare against the North. It's appalling that such officers gave the green light to a woman who was spying for the North. Won allegedly delivered 52 security lectures to active officers and enlisted men for the year and a half from November 2006. In these so-called security lectures, she told them the Korean War was started by the U.S. and Japan, and that North Korea's nuclear weapons are for self-defense. No wonder that some of our soldiers hold the view that our main enemy is not the Kim Jong-il regime but the U.S. and Japan.
But our government should not give up on North Korean refugees because of the spy incident. The U.S., despite the infiltration of some spies, did not stop accommodating Cuban refugees. Until the Kim Jong-il regime is replaced, the North's strategy of communizing the South will remain intact and espionage agents will continue infiltrating here. We must not waiver in our principles because of the minor risks involved. North Korean refugees in the South will play a major role in reconstructing North Korean society after Kim Jong-il era and will be a catalyst in Korea's unification.
Instead, we should increase security education and a drive to know North Korea for what it is. Won Jeong-hwa did not die a heroic death like the heroine of “Swiri.” She underwent a psychological change while living in the South, taking a more objective view of the North and is said to have recently intended to surrender to police.
The problem lies inside us. Having lived for too long under governments that are ignorant of the realities in North Korea and that do not teach the public of these realities, our security consciousness has slipped. The Lee Myung-bak administration should re-start public education on the real North Korea.
The column was contributed by Ha Tae-keung, the president of Open Radio for North Korea.