North Korean use of false defector recalls Nosenko-Golitsyn dispute
A North Korean woman who had defected to South Korea was uncovered as a spy for Pyongyang, highlighting the communist regime’s plan to dispatch false defectors for intelligence-gathering.
North Korean Won Jeong-hwa, 35, an alleged defector, was arrested last month and charged with spying.
Reuters
Won Jeong-Wa, was arrested in July and according to reports provided valuable military data, including sensitive photographs and a list of military officers, to North Korea.
Won developed relationships with military officers and traveled frequently to China for meetings with North Korean spymasters.
Among the operations police linked to her were a plot to kidnap a military officer and efforts to locate North Korean defectors in the South, including Hwang Jang-Yop, the highest ranking defector.
She also sought to help the North Koreans assassinate South Korean intelligence agents.
The CIA was hampered by concerns in the 1970s that Moscow had dispatched false defectors to the agency as part of a strategic deception program.
That information was provided by KGB defector Anatoly Golitsyn, who claimed that an earlier defector, Yuri Nosenko, was a plant. Nosenko was imprisoned by the CIA for years before being cleared, amid lingering suspicions that he was a false defector.
