A North Korean defector in her 40s,
identified only by her surname, Kim, has been sentenced to two years in
prison and an additional two years of probation for attempting to sell information
about North Korean refugees in South Korea to Pyongyang.
On the 5th, a local court in Daegu
charged Kim, who defected to the South by way of Laos and Thailand in 2011, for
breaching South Korea’s controversial National Security Law, after she contacted
the North Korean consulate in Shenyang via phone to re-enter North Korea in 2012.
Kim contacted the North Korean consulate in
August 2012 because she longed for her family still in the country. During the
call, she received orders to find information about “the miserable lives of
North Korean refugees in South Korea and so-called ‘brokers’ who aid and abet in these defections.”
According to the court, Kim tried to re-enter North Korea by using a counterfeit passport, but, overcome with
guilt, confessed her actions to the police in 2013.
Kim informed the court that this incident was a result of being “tricked by the escape broker’s claim that she could
treat her disease and have a better life in South Korea.” She added that she came across this ‘broker’ while residing in her
cousin’s house in China for medical treatment.
“South Korea
is ruining one person’s life by giving her citizenship without her consent
and stopping her from going back to her home country,” Kim stated to the court, referring to her situation.
After handing down the sentence, the court explained that “even
though there are doubts surrounding her escape story, the sentence takes into account Kim’s
concern for her family leading to such actions, the fact that the information
was never sent, and the fact that Kim eventually came forward on her own. “
Furthermore, the justice department said
that recognizing the extenuating circumstances in which the
accused found herself, it decided to grant her some degree of leniency.
Prosecutors originally demanded a four-year
prison sentence for Kim’s crimes.
