SEOUL, South Korea - A woman from North Korea charged with espionage admitted in court Wednesday that she spied for the communist country, an official said, in a spectacular case that has drawn wide attention in South Korea. Won Jeong-hwa made the admission during the first court hearing in her trial at the Suwon District Court, south of Seoul, said Judge Lim Min-sung, who serves as a court spokesman. Lim said he had no more details. Won, who is in custody, could not be reached.It was the first time Won, 34, appeared in public since her July arrest on charges of passing classified information to her homeland. News photos showed Won dressed in a light-blue prison uniform and wearing a cap and a surgical mask.
She is the first alleged North Korean spy arrested in South Korea since 2006, and the second in a decade. If convicted, she could be sentenced to between seven years in prison and execution.
Yonhap news agency reported that Won submitted a written statement to the court, admitting to the charges. "I endured difficult training and worked hard to carry out missions as an agent, believing that rendering loyalty (to the North's leader) is everything," she said in the statement, according to Yonhap. "But while living in the South, I started to have doubts about the North Korean regime, and my mind was in emotional conflict," she said. Yonhap said Won was tearful for most of the hearing.
Prosecutors said late last month that Won had admitted she was a spy trained and commissioned by the North's intelligence agency. The information she sent to the North included the locations of key military installations, lists of North Korean defectors and personal information on South Korean military officers, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said Won entered the South in 2001 after marrying a South Korean businessman in China, falsely reporting to authorities that she was a defector from the North. She and her husband immediately divorced. Prosecutors said Won dated a South Korean army captain and used "sex as a tool" for her mission. The officer knew she was a spy, but still cooperated with her, prosecutors said. He was also arrested.
Doesn't sound like Captain Horny was part of a setup.
Won also confessed to having plotted to assassinate South Korean intelligence agents with poison needles provided by the North, but did not carry it out, prosecutors said earlier. Such movie-like details in the charges have drawn keen media attention, with some newspapers calling her Korea's version of "Mata Hari," the notorious dancer-turned-World War I spy.
The case has also further frayed South Korea's already troubled relations with the North, as the communist nation protested angrily that Seoul has fabricated the case to sully Pyongyang's image.
Look soon for another "human scum" story...