3 arrested on Jeju as anti-state spy ring investigation deepens

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3 arrested on Jeju as anti-state spy ring investigation deepens

Published: 28 Oct. 2024, 18:33

MICHAEL LEE
lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr

Left-leaning civic activists hold placards calling on the South Korean government to “cease illegal surveillance of civilians” and “abolish the National Security Act” during a protest in front of the headquarters of the Jeju Special Self-Governing Provincial Police Agency on Monday. [YONHAP]

Jeju police said they arrested three people on suspicion of violating the National Security Act on Monday as they deepened their investigation into alleged spy rings on the island and across the country.

According to the Jeju Special Self-Governing Provincial Police Agency, one of the suspects is the chief of the local chapter of a labor union for school workers on temporary contracts.

Another suspect is the former head of the Jeju chapter of the Korean Construction Workers’ Union, while the third is the chief of a local sub-chapter of the Korean Woman Peasant Association.

According to a local police official who spoke on condition of anonymity to reporters, all three refused to submit to questioning by investigators on multiple occasions “without just cause,” leading law enforcement to seek arrest warrants against them.

Police said that they plan to question the three suspects in detention to gather more information on Kang Eun-ju and Park Hyun-woo, both former chiefs of the minor liberal Progressive Party’s Jeju branch, and Go Chang-geon, former head of the Korean Peasant League, on charges of running a spy ring on the island under orders from Pyongyang.

The trio were arrested and indicted last year, months after prosecutors charged four people in Changwon, South Gyeongsang, of running an underground anti-state organization.

The investigation into the Changwon-based group unveiled the existence of similar organizations across the country’s southern regions.

A civic activist suspected of spying for North Korea arrives at the Seoul Central District Court in southern Seoul to attend his arrest warrant hearing on Jan. 31, 2023. [YONHAP]

According to officials from the state prosecution service, the Changwon group was founded in 2016 and maintained contact with North Korean intelligence agents in Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries to receive directives and money from them.

Investigators said the suspects communicated with the North’s agents using steganography, a method of hiding messages or information within otherwise ordinary-looking text or data.

Prosecutors have accused members of the various underground groups of following orders given by North Korean agents to foment public division by criticizing the South Korean government.

Members of the ring allegedly infiltrated civic groups or labor unions related to farmers and students to recruit new members, and one of the suspects has been accused of introducing North Korean agents to Kang.

Their activities were discovered after six years of domestic surveillance conducted by the National Intelligence Service (NIS), including overseas evidence-gathering and wiretapping.

In response to the latest arrests, left-leaning civic activists held a protest to demand the South Korean government “cease illegal surveillance of civilians” and abolish the National Security Act in front of the Jeju police agency’s headquarters on Monday.

The National Security Act forbids “praise, incitement or the propagation the activities of an anti-state organization” and is currently applied against people suspected of conducting pro-North Korea activities.

Although the NIS previously monitored South Korean civilians to enforce the law, an amendment to the National Intelligence Service Act passed by the Democratic Party (DP)-controlled National Assembly in 2021 transferred the right to investigate violations of the National Security Act from the NIS to the police.

Although conservative People Power Party leader Han Dong-hoon has called for legislation to restore the spy agency's ability to conduct domestic surveillance, the DP has vowed to block such attempts.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]