Colonel in North Korea’s Spy Agency Has Defected to South, Seoul Says
By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — A colonel belonging to North Korea’s spy agency recently defected to South Korea, the South announced on Monday. He is one of the highest-ranking North Korean military officers known to have defected to South Korea in recent decades.

The Defense and Unification Ministries of South Korea would confirm only that a colonel from the North’s General Bureau of Reconnaissance had recently defected, declining to provide further details.

The South Korean news agency Yonhap, which earlier reported the officer’s defection, said he arrived in South Korea last year. A few South Korean news outlets also reported on Monday that a North Korean diplomat stationed in Africa defected to the South last May. The government confirmed that defection as well.

The revelations followed South Korea’s confirmation on Friday that 13 North Koreans working for a North Korean government-run restaurant abroad had defected to the South a day earlier.

The colonel would be the highest-ranking official from the spy bureau known to have crossed over to the South. It remained unclear what his defection meant in a continuing spy war between the Koreas, which remain technically at war after a cease-fire ended open conflict in 1953.

Some South Korean news outlets quoted unidentified government sources as saying that the colonel had been involved in running spy operations against South Korea while working in the North, indicating that his defection could have handed a potential trove of intelligence to the South Korean authorities.

It has been rare for South Korean officials to publicly confirm the defections of North Koreans, especially those of high rank. Even when they have, they usually waited until after the government had thoroughly debriefed the defectors and was reasonably sure that announcing their defections would not jeopardize family members left in the North.

Opposition political parties accused the conservative government of President Park Geun-hye of advertising the high-profile defections in recent days to help attract votes in parliamentary elections set for Wednesday.

During news briefings on Monday, local journalists bombarded the spokesmen of the Defense and Unification Ministries with questions about why the government had announced or leaked the news of the high-profile defections just ahead of the elections.

The government denied that the announcements were politically motivated. Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman for the Unification Ministry, said the defections of 13 North Koreans last week were significant enough to be announced because they occurred while the North was being punished with United Nations sanctions. He also said the colonel’s defection could be seen as a sign that some of the North Korean elites were not happy under the supreme leader, Kim Jong-un.

Ms. Park’s government has championed the vigorous enforcement of sanctions against North Korea, citing the recent defections as evidence that the sanctions were working.

But Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at the Sejong Institute, said the isolated defections did not prove that the sanctions were working or that Mr. Kim’s grip on power in the North was weakening.

North Korea created the General Bureau of Reconnaissance in 2009 by combining various party and military agencies in charge of collecting intelligence abroad and infiltrating the South with spies.

In recent years, the spy bureau expanded its saboteur and spy operations to cyberspace. The United States blacklisted the bureau last year after North Korean hacking attacks were blamed for wreaking havoc on the computer network of Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014.

It was again blacklisted in March, when the United Nations Security Council adopted new sanctions to help stop North Korea from raising funds and securing technology for its nuclear weapons and missile programs.

史上最高階！ 北韓二星中將投奔南韓

南韓政府十一日證實，在北韓偵察總局負責對南韓特務工作的一名二星中將去年投奔南韓，詳細描述工作情形，是歷年來投誠南韓的最高階北韓軍官，但南韓政府拒絕透露細節。

南韓最大反對黨「共同民主黨」指控政府刻意在十三日國會選舉前公布消息，企圖催出執政黨「新世界黨」的保守派選票。南韓政府否認政治動機，說公布消息是為了大眾利益。

南韓政府先前在八日宣布，十三名在北韓境外國營餐廳工作的北韓人，已向南韓投誠，包括一名男性經理和十二名女性，這些人七日抵達南韓。他們在中國大陸浙江省寧波市的北韓餐廳工作，經東南亞的第三國前來南韓。

南韓政府絕少證實北韓人投誠的消息，尤其是北韓高官，一來擔心脫北者還在北韓的家人受威脅，二來怕破壞脫北者取道的第三國與南韓的外交關係。北韓經常對脫北者取道進入南韓的第三國提出抗議。以往南韓政府只會在從脫北者身上蒐集情報好幾個月、並徵得脫北者同意後，才會公布消息。

南韓智庫世宗研究院學者鄭相昌說，政府罕見地公布脫北者消息，「很難不讓人聯想是為了左右選舉結果」。

韓民族日報報導，北韓問題向來很對保守派選民胃口，最近南韓總統朴槿惠多次在演講、開會和出席公開活動時強調北韓的威脅，顯然是為執政黨凝聚選票。

金正恩上台後，北韓與中國大陸邊境管制加強，逃離北韓的脫北者總數減少，但菁英階層脫北者增加。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/world/asia/north-korea-defector.html

2016-04-12．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯李京倫