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SUWEON, South Korea: A North Korean woman spy who came to South Korea claiming to be a defector and allegedly used sex to secure military secrets was jailed for five years Wednesday.
Won Jeong-Hwa, 35, had confessed her role and expressed remorse at previous hearings. Dressed in dark green prison garb and with her hair in a ponytail, she appeared grim-faced but calm as the sentence was passed.
"Taking all the evidence into account, the accused is guilty on all charges," Judge Shin Yong-Seok said.
The court in Suweon city just south of Seoul found Won had collected information on key military installations and passed it on to North Korean agents in China.
She was also found guilty of involvement in the kidnapping of a South Korean businessman from China to her hardline communist homeland in 1999, and of trying to trace the whereabouts of a top defector living in the South.
Hwang Jang-Yop, a former secretary of the North's ruling party, lives under guard against assassination attempts after defecting in 1997.
Investigators said Won traded sexual favours with some officers for secrets, and had been tasked with assassinating two South Koreans linked to Seoul's spy agency using a poison-tipped needle. The plot did not go ahead.
North Korea has denied she was its agent, calling her "human scum" and describing the trial as a "threadbare charade" orchestrated to heighten tensions.
The two nations have remained technically at war since their 1950-1953 conflict even though contacts have expanded greatly over the past decade.
At the previous hearing on October 1, prosecutors had requested a relatively lenient five-year jail term for Won. They said she was remorseful and had led investigators to another agent who is her stepfather.
The sensational case came to light in August when investigators announced Won's arrest and that of her stepfather Kim Dong-Sun.
Prosecutors said Won had been "brainwashed" in the North and was forced to follow orders because she feared retribution against friends and family there.
A tearful Won had pleaded for leniency at the previous hearing.
"I wanted to turn myself in but I just could not because of fears for my relatives in the North," she said in a choking voice.
"I repent my past activities. I just want a chance to live again with my daughter in South Korea."
Won collected information, including photographs and locations of key military installations and weapons systems, and handed it to the North's agents in China.
Investigators said Won had served jail time for theft in the North and feared possible execution for another theft.
She fled to northeast China but returned home 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 the occasions to contact army officers.
"In China, I earnestly carried out various missions, helping kidnapping North Korean defectors and South Koreans and engaging in drug trafficking," Won told the court on October 1.
Her stepfather Kim, 63, went on trial on October 1 and will next appear on October 22.
More than 4,500 people have been exposed as spies for the North since the peninsula was divided in 1948, South Korea's Defence Security Command says.
- AFP/yt
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