Regime parades pair and says they operated from Chinese base but South Korea calls claims ‘groundless’

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

North Korea said it had arrested two South Koreans engaged in espionage, a move likely to worsen their perennially fraught relationship.



In a dispatch on Thursday the North’s official KCNA news agency described the two men, identified as Kim Kuk-gi and Choe Chun-gil, as “heinous terrorists” who operated from a base in the Chinese border city of Dandong.

“They zealously took part in an anti-DPRK [anti-North Korea] smear campaign”, said KCNA, alleging their activities were organised by US intelligence and the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS).

The two arrested men were presented at a “press conference” in Pyongyang attended by journalists and foreign diplomats.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Choe Chun-gil, arrested by North Korea as a spy. Photograph: KCNA/Reuters

In Seoul the NIS said the charge that the two men were working for the agency was “absolutely groundless”.

Lim Byeong-cheol, a spokesman at South Korea’s unification ministry, confirmed Kim and Choe were South Korean citizens but denied they were engaged in espionage operations. Ministry officials could not explain how the two ended up in the North.



“We strongly demand North Korea to quickly release our citizens Kim Kuk-gi and Choe Chun-gil and repatriate them without hesitation,” Lim said.

Cross-border relations are already strained over joint South Korea-US military exercises that Pyongyang has condemned as provocative rehearsals for invasion.



The KCNA report said Kim and Choe had gathered information about North Korea’s “party, state and military secrets”. It was not immediately clear where or when the two men were arrested.

Among other things Kim was accused of spreading “religious propaganda” from an “underground church” he ran in Dandong, which has a large ethnic Korean community and is a hub of both official and illicit cross-border trade.

In 2014 North Korea sentenced a South Korean missionary to hard labour for life on charges of espionage and setting up an underground church.

Although religious freedom is enshrined in the North Korean constitution it does not exist in practice and religious activity is severely restricted to officially recognised groups linked to the government.

Pyongyang views foreign missionaries as seditious elements intent on fomenting unrest and those who are caught engaging in any unauthorised activities in the North are subject to immediate arrest.