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North Korea detained two South Korean citizens Friday on espionage charges, in a move that could worsen already-frosty inter-Korean relations.
North Korean authorities announced Kim Guk-cheol and Choi Choon-gil were detained for spying on the North. The South denied the accusations and demanded their immediate release.
“We strongly ask that (the North) release our citizens without delay,” a spokesperson for the South’s Unification Ministry said. “We express deep regret over the North’s ridiculous claims.”
Kim Guk-gi (left) and Choi Choon-gil, two South Koreans, appear at a press conference Thursday in Pyongyang. North Korea has detained them on espionage charges. (Yonhap)
But the South’s efforts to free them will be an uphill battle, analysts said, given the North’s record on detaining U.S. and South Korean citizens for months on similar grounds, despite external pressure to release them.
Later Friday, the North refused to accept a letter from Seoul officials requesting their release.
The Unification Ministry also requested for Kim Jong-uk, another South Korean citizen, to be released. He has been detained in North Korea since October 2013.
Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American, was detained in the North for nearly two years from 2012 to late last year. Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two U.S. reporters, were also detained in 2009.
The North asserted that Kim and Choi were found to have relayed information on the North to the South’s National Intelligence Service. Pyongyang authorities added the two had attained information from Chinese residents near the North Korean border in Manchuria.
Kim and Choi admitted their charges at a press conference held in the North. Many in the South believe the conference was staged and the confessions made under duress.
“Their lives probably depended on it,” said Ahn Chan-il, a North Korea expert.
Ahn added that Kim and Choi were likely detained so the North could gain an upper hand over the South in any future negotiations.
“For South Korea to gain (Kim and Choi’s release), it will be forced to appease the North in some way,” he said.
“The North might ask that the South lift sanctions imposed on the North in return for someone’s release,” Ahn added, in reference to the so-called May 24 sanctions the South put on the North in 2010 after Pyongyang torpedoed a southern naval ship, the Cheonan, in March of that year.
There has been debate in Seoul’s legislature in recent weeks over whether it should lift the May 24 sanctions in order to improve worsening ties with the North. But most South Korean conservatives have opposed removing the sanctions, saying the North must first apologize for its sinking of the Cheonan.
North Korea has consistently denied involvement in the sinking, sparking anger with both liberal and conservative South Koreans.
South Korea called on North Korea on Friday to immediately release two of its nationals detained in the communist country on espionage charges.
A man identified as Kim Kuk-gi (Yonhap)
North Korea announced that it has arrested the two South Korean men on charges of espionage for the South's state spy agency.
"It's very regrettable that the North is making such a groundless claim about them," the unification ministry said in a statement. "We strongly call for their quick release and repatriation."
The North held a press conference for the two, which it identified as Kim Kuk-gi and Choe Chun-gil, at the People's Palace of Culture in Pyongyang on Thursday. Speaking at a press briefing, unification ministry spokesman Lim Byeong-cheol confirmed that Kim and Choe are South Korean nationals. But he refused to clarify whether they are related to the NIS.
It is a matter that requires a South Korean government probe after they are freed and repatriated here, Lim said.
He instead criticized the North for violating human rights and humanitarian spirit as well as international practices by unilaterally detaining the South's citizens without any notice to Seoul.
In the Pyongyang press conference, meanwhile, an unnamed official at the North's Ministry of State Security branded them as "heinous terrorists," according to Pyongyang's media.
"They zealously took part in the anti-DPRK smear campaign of the U.S. imperialists and the puppet group of traitors to isolate and blockade the DPRK in the international arena by labeling it 'a country printing counterfeit notes' and 'sponsor of terrorism' while pulling it up over its 'human rights issue,'" the North's official was quoted as saying.
DPRK is the acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.
The official also accused the two of gathering information on the Workers' Party of Korea and other state and military secrets.
Pyongyang released public footage and audio files of what it claims to be the two men's confessions of spying for the South's National Intelligence Service.
With the North's security agents standing next to them, Kim and Choe said they were bribed by a senior NIS agent to collect information on the communist nation and criticize its system.
In 2010, Kim said, he received an "instruction" from the NIS that the North's top leader might visit China by train and he provided the Seoul-based agency with information related to a railway station in a Chinese border town.
He also said he offered information on the North's nuclear program. He admitted to have committed a grave crime and apologized for that.
Kim was born in Daejeon, a South Korean city, and he had operated an underground church in the Chinese border city of Dandong since 2003, the North said, without specifying when and how he was arrested.
As to Choe, it said, his hometown is the South's eastern city of Chuncheon, and the 56-year-old left his country in 2003 and spent many years in China. He was caught by the North's border guards after illegally entering the nation.
The arrests of Kim and Choe are expected to add to already-strained ties between the two Koreas.
It raised the number of South Koreans currently detained in the North to three. Kim Jeong-wook, a South Korean missionary, was put in custody in October 2013. (Yonhap)
