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(Yonhap Interview) N. Korean defector denies spy charges against him


A North Korean defector involved in a snowballing espionage case flatly denied the charges against him on Wednesday, saying the prosecution should take responsibility for submitting a fake document to the court in a bid to have him framed.

Yoo Woo-Seong, a 34-year-old who defected to the South in 2004, has been accused by South Korean prosecutors and the state intelligence agency of carrying out espionage activities for the North's Reconnaissance General Bureau.

A local district court acquitted Yoo of espionage charges in August 2013. Prosecutors appealed the verdict and submitted three Chinese immigration records obtained from South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, purporting to relate to visits to the North. The Chinese Embassy here later announced they were forged.

"The prosecution should hold themselves accountable for not making sufficient efforts to verify the authenticity of the immigration records," Yoo said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency.

The case began when Yoo, a former Seoul city government official, was indicted on charges of handing over the personal information of more than 200 North Korean defectors to the bureau after disguising himself as a defector in order to enter South Korea.

Prosecutors alleged that Yoo, formerly a Chinese national in North Korea, collected the detailed information on the defectors in the South while he was working as a government official, and relayed them to the bureau during several visits to the North.

He, however, denied the allegations.

"It was not my job to manage North Korean defectors (living in the South)," Yoo said, adding that he was hired by the Seoul Metropolitan Government to work for the division of general welfares on a two-year contract.

The prosecution has also alleged that Yoo, who held a Chinese passport while living in the communist regime, came to the South by deliberately withholding his nationality.

"I am sorry that I was not honest in the beginning about holding Chinese nationality while living in North Korea," Yoo said, adding that he is just one of 26,500 North Korean defectors who are struggling to adapt to life in the democratic South.

Yoo, who has three other different names including Ka-kang and Kang-il, also allegedly has a history of seeking asylum in the United Kingdom in 2008.

"Why would I go all the way to the U.K. and seek asylum if I had money and family in the South?" Yoo said. "It was not a perfect but an inevitable choice to learn English to get a stable job in Seoul."

As to some legal experts' opinion that he should be deprived of South Korean citizenship for hiding his ethic background, Yoo said he is willing to accept such a consequence if South Korean law, which is supposed to be fair to all citizens, does not have a double standard.

As to his younger sister, who first raised accusations against him in the trials, Yoo said he now understands her as she is just another victim of coercive investigation by the NIS.

"I think I would also give answers that investigators wanted if I were locked in solitary for 179 days," Yoo said. "My sister was deprived of the basic right to meet her lawyers during the questioning by the NIS."

Following a year-long investigation and a prolonged high-profile trial, Yoo said that he has lost faith in South Korean prosecutors and doubts they will be able to get to the bottom of the case.

"I hope that the prosecutors will be able to discover the truth, but, frankly, I have lost trust in them," he said. (Yonhap)