SEOUL, KOREA: South Korea’s government arrested an alleged North Korean spy earlier this month for passing confidential military information to Pyongyang, investigators said Wednesday (27 Aug).

The 34-year-old woman, Won Jeong-hwa, infiltrated the South in 2001 in the disguise of a Korean-Chinese and married a South Korean to keep her identity under wraps, according to the investigators. Later, Won registered as a defector from the North.

Won used her trade business front to frequently travel to China, where she had a North Korean liaison officer with whom she shared the military secrets.

The information she was ordered to produce included the location of key military facilities and the whereabouts of Hwang Jang-yup, the former secretary of the North Korean Worker's Party who defected to the South in 1997.

Won also was directed to assassinate South Korean government agents who were collecting information about the North, investigators said.

In China, the alleged North Korean spy was involved in mass abductions on Pyongyang's orders.

Won allegedly engaged in extramarital affairs with military officers she met through match-making agencies and lectures at military facilities, so as to access military secrets.

One of the officers, an army captain identified only by his family name Hwang, was arrested for having passed on confidential information, despite the fact that he learned of Won's identity.

Authorities also have arrested Won's stepfather who, as a former high-ranking North Korean official, aided Won's activities since defecting to the South in 2006.

"The information Won gathered may not be as valuable in fragments, but together, it could cause serious damage," the Defence Security Command said. The command is studying Won's case separately from the police investigation.

The DSC said that Won received formal espionage training before she defected.

Military authorities are now under fire for having failed to detect Won's identity earlier.

Thanks to her impressive educational credentials, Won had toured South Korean troop facilities to give lectures on North Korean society.

The security command was responsible for selecting such military lecturers. Command officials said they chose Won because she could speak eloquently about her experiences.

Command officers said they have been keeping an eye on her since March 2007, when Won was discovered to have visited the North Korean consulate to receive North Korean-made propaganda programs, which she later showed during her lectures.

The command said it launched a formal investigation in June 2007, but authorities are currently giving contradictory accounts of exactly when they suspected that Won was a spy.

She was arrested on 11 Aug.

The arrest of the alleged North Korean spy comes amid strained inter-Korean relations, which have recently worsened because of the killing of a South Korean tourist at Mount Geumgang by a North Korea guard.

Over 4,500 people have been exposed as spies for the North since 1948 when the two Koreas were first divided, the Defense Security Command said. (By KIM JI-HYUN/ The Korea Herald/ ANN)