AFP

Paris: France's Senate said Tuesday it had suspended a senior French civil servant arrested on suspicion of spying for North Korea.

Benoit Quennedey, a senior administrator in France's upper house of parliament and president of the Franco-Korean Friendship Association, was taken into custody late Sunday.

Investigators suspect him of the "collection and delivery of information to a foreign power likely to undermine the fundamental interests of the nation", a judicial source told AFP.

He is being held at the headquarters of France's DGSI domestic intelligence agency on the outskirts of Paris.

In a statement the Senate said he had been provisionally suspended from his job as chief administrator in the department of architecture, heritage and gardens and that his Senate office had been searched by police.

"It's now time to let justice take its course without interference," Senate President Gerard Larcher said.

The French news and talk show Le Quotidien, which broke the story, said Quennedey, who has written extensively on North Korea, often in admiring tones, was arrested at his home.

It was not clear what type of information he was suspected of trying to pass to Pyongyang.

The Senate said the alleged spying, if proven, would be "extremely serious and would deal a blow to the image of our institution", adding that it had joined the criminal case as a civil plaintiff.

It is the second time this year that reports of suspected spying have emerged in France.

In May, officials revealed that two former agents at France's DGSE foreign intelligence agency had been arrested last December on suspicion of passing information to China.

'No litter on ground'

Quennedey has travelled extensively throughout the Korean peninsula, according to the website of his publisher Delga.

In a video posted on YouTube that month, he described impoverished, isolated North Korea as a "model for development", praising citizens' free access to education and health care.

"I've been there seven times since 2005, and in North Korea, you notice it, there's no litter on the ground," he says in the video.

Since 2007, he has been president of the Franco-Korean Friendship Association, formed in the late 1960s by journalists sympathetic to socialist and communist causes.

The group pushes for closer ties with Pyongyang and supports the reunification of the divided Koreas.

Quennedey attended France's elite Sciences Po university as well as the ENA school which produces its top civil servants and political leaders.

New Asian Dragon?

In regular interviews with the French arm of the Kremlin-funded TV network RT, Quennedey is presented as an "expert in international relations" offering commentary and analysis on Korean relations and other subjects.

In 2013 he wrote "North Korea's Economy: Birth of a New Asian Dragon?".

The book posited model growth in the country despite tough international sanctions over Pyongyang's nuclear programme which have crippled the economy.

The UN estimates that some 10.3 million people, or 41 percent of North Korea's population, are undernourished -- even as neighbouring South Korea's economy flourishes.

Hopes of a breakthrough were sparked last June when US President Donald Trump met with regime leader Kim Jong Un for a historic summit meeting in Singapore.

Both men vowed to improve relations and Kim indicated he would abandon the nuclear work.

But despite a string of reconciliation gestures between North and South Korea progress has been patchy, and Washington is still pushing to maintain sanctions until Pyongyang's "final, fully verified denuclearisation".

Researchers have accused Kim Jong Un of using undeclared bases to hide nuclear-capable missiles, while Pyongyang's state media reported this month that the country had developed an unspecified "ultramodern tactical weapon".

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