SEOUL: South Korean prosecutors said on Wednesday they have arrested a North Korean defector accused of spying for her communist homeland, partly by offering sexual favours to military officers.

Won Jeong-Hwa, 35, is suspected of collecting information, including photographs and exact locations of key military installations and weapons systems, and handing it over to North Korean agents in China.

Investigators said one of her missions had been to locate Hwang Jang-Yop, the highest-ranking defector ever to come South. Hwang, who defected in 1997 and is still under police guard, is a harsh critic of the North's regime.

They said the North had also ordered Won to assassinate two South Koreans with links to the Seoul spy agency, using a poison-tipped needle. The plot did not go ahead.

Investigators said Won had served jail time for theft in the North and feared possible execution for committing another crime, stealing tons of zinc.

She fled to northeast China but returned home with the help of relatives and in 1998 became a spy for the North's espionage agency.

Her first task was to arrange the kidnap of North Korean defectors in China, they said.

In 2001 she entered South Korea and was tasked by its National Intelligence Service with touring military units to give anti-communist lectures. She used these occasions to make contact with army officers.

Prosecutors said only one officer, a 25-year-old army captain, was found to have offered classified information. He was also detained.

Won was arrested last month nearly two years after military intelligence began watching her, following a report by one of the officers she approached.

Her 63-year-old foster father has also been arrested on suspicion of helping her activities.

"There had been suspicion that spies may mingle with North Korean defectors...and this is the case that first brought it to light," said Kim Kyung-Soo, a senior prosecutor.

Some 14,180 North Koreans have escaped and resettled in South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 war, with the number growing rapidly in recent years.

All of them undergo checks before being resettled.

More than 4,500 people have been exposed as spies for the North since the peninsula was divided in 1948, officials at the Defence Security Command said.

The two Koreas have remained technically at war since their 1950-1953 conflict ended in an armistice. - AFP/de