Seoul Arrests Suspected N. Korean Poison Assassin
South Korea has arrested a North Korean agent who plotted to assassinate an outspoken anti-Pyongyang activist with a poison-tipped needle, the intended victim and a news report said Friday.
The agent, identified only as An, was in possession of the needle and other weapons at the time of his arrest, Yonhap news agency said.
The target of the apparent plot, the latest of several blamed on Pyongyang, was activist Park Sang-Hak, who is involved in launching cross-border propaganda leaflets fiercely critical of the North's regime.
He said the plot was foiled by South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS).
An, a former North Korean special forces commando aged in his 40s, came to the South in the late 1990s as a defector but disappeared several years ago, according to Yonhap.
After resurfacing in the South in February, An sought to meet Park.
But Park, alerted by the anti-espionage agency, said he did not show up for a meeting with An at a subway station in southern Seoul on September 3.
"An told me by phone that he was to be accompanied by a visitor from Japan who wants to help our efforts. But then I was told by the NIS not to go to the meeting due to the risk of assassination," Park told Agence France Presse.
"Following advice from intelligence authorities and police, I don't see any strangers these days."
An NIS spokesman said the agency did not comment on cases under investigation.
Park is a former North Korean defector who along with other activists sends thousands of anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, sparking angry protests from North Korea.
It has threatened to fire across the border at launch sites for the towering gas balloons that carry the leaflet bundles. Recent leaflets have urged North Koreans to rise up "like Libyan rebels" and topple the regime.
Park told Yonhap a woman who claimed to be a defector had visited his office and offered help in his campaigns to send the leaflets.
But the woman disappeared afterwards, he said. Yonhap said authorities were looking for her as a suspect.
North Korea has a history of trying to silence critics in the South.
In January a court jailed a North Korean spy for 10 years for plotting to assassinate the highest-ranking defector ever to flee to the South.
The court said the would-be assassin intended to murder Hwang Jang-Yop on orders from Pyongyang, after entering the South posing as a defector.
Hwang died of natural causes at his closely guarded Seoul home last October 10 at the age of 87.
In July last year, two other North Korean spies were sentenced to 10 years in prison for plotting to murder Hwang.
In 1997 Lee Han-Young, a nephew of Sung Hye-Rim -- the deceased first wife of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il -- was shot dead outside his apartment in South Korea.
Lee, who had lived in the South for 15 years, was murdered after breaking his long silence about Kim's private life.
Last month a South Korean missionary working with North Korean refugees in China collapsed and died suddenly in the street. A fellow missionary and a newspaper report voiced suspicion Pyongyang agents were involved.
Another South Korean activist elsewhere in northeast China said he himself was stabbed with a poison-tipped needle in a separate non-fatal incident.
Source: Agence France Presse
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