ACTIVISTS ACCUSED OF SPYING ACTIVITIES

[Anchor Lead]

Members of a civic group that protested the deployment of F53 stealth jet fighters in South Korea have been arrested for violating the National Security Law. They are facing the charges of setting up an underground organization and reporting to a North Korean agent 84 times. The arrested have strongly denied the allegations.

[Pkg]

According to the details of the arrest warrant, it is evident that one of the four arrested members of the civic group, a man surnamed Park, met with a North Korean agent in May 2017 in Beijing. The agent was from an organization known to deal with South Korea. In August of the same year Park and three other suspects set up an underground organization at the North Korean agent’s order. They allegedly received 84 orders from the North and sent back reports over four years, starting in June 2017. The National Intelligence Service obtained relevant papers in a USB seized at Park’s residence. The arrest warrant says that in February 2020, ahead of the general elections in South Korea, the North asked the four suspects to transmit information on the situation in the ruling and opposition parties. According to the NIS, a month later, one of the group members met with a Democratic Party executive and reported on that meeting to North Korea. One of the documents in the USB says the group members collected personal information about select members of South Korea's political parties and reported to the North. The arrest warrant says the suspects encrypted their documents using steganography and replaced key words with secret codes when writing emails before deleting them later. The NIS and police on Monday interrogated one of the group members for whom an arrest warrant had been dismissed. The suspects’ attorney claims the accusation that the man Park met with in Beijing was a North Korean agent is groundless. The attorney also said the documents and reports stored in the USB might have been fabricated, and the NIS had failed to prove how they were collected.