South Korean police have detained a defector who deceived five other North Korean defectors with the offer of passage to South Korea but then turned them over to the North Korean authorities instead.
On the 15th, Uijeonbu District Prosecutor’s Office charged 48-year old Chae with violating South Korea’s National Security Law. Chae is a former agent with the North Korean state intelligence organ, the National Security Agency (NSA).
Chae is accused of handing over two soldiers and three members of a family to an NSA agent on December 15th, 2004. They had been hiding in the border town of Tumen as they prepared to move to South Korea.
During a police investigation, it was revealed that Chae contacted the defectors on the orders of the North Korean authorities, and said he would send them along with one other individual to South Korea via Mongolia. He lured them to the banks of the Tumen River, but then turned them over to an agent from the NSA.
Chae allegedly became an NSA agent in 2001 and was given the task of tracking down defectors in China. However, he was exposed as a smuggler and later headed for South Korea. He subsequently received South Korean citizenship. However, he was then persuaded to begin acting as a North Korean agent once again by an NSA cadre he contacted for help.
A 34-year-old woman who arrived in South Korea this year revealed Chae’s nine-year old crime. The anonymous defector, who was released from a North Korean prison in 2011, escaped to South Korea in March 2013 via Laos and Thailand. She informed investigators of Chae’s crime upon her arrival.
