A number of North Koreans have been arrested and could face execution for leaking information on the movements of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to South Korean news media, reports and sources said yesterday.
Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, quoting sources in the communist state, said “many North Korean residents” in the northeastern city of Hoeryong have been charged with espionage.
It said they were accused of leaking information on Kim’s Feb. 24 “field guidance” trip to the city to a South Korean Internet newspaper and may face execution.
Real-time information on Kim’s whereabouts is treated as a state secret. The official media reports his trips without giving a date and sometimes without giving the exact location.
The South Korean Unification Ministry, which handles cross-border relations, declined to comment on the Dong-A report. The newspaper did not say when the group was arrested.
Daily NK, a Seoul-based Internet newspaper run by opponents of the regime, in February reported almost in real time that Kim had visited Hoeryong, near the border with China.
It said its information came from local correspondents using mobile phones.
However, a Daily NK staffer denied its stringers had been arrested, saying the newspaper talked to them yesterday.
“A different group of North Korean residents who had worked for another Seoul-based civilian organization were caught using unauthorized mobiles in Hoeryong,” said Shin Ju-hyun, a Daily NK journalist.
Shin said he was unaware of the fate of those arrested, but they could be executed or sent to prison camps.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s navy rescued a North Korean soldier who ended up in the South’s waters while fishing and the man wants to be returned home, a report said yesterday.
The soldier was found in the waters off the Korean Peninsula’s west coast in the area where the North and South Korean navies engaged in a brief but deadly gunbattle several weeks ago, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.
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