Yonhap reports that late last month, a North Korean spy using a laundered Filipino passport was arrested in Seoul, the first time a North Korean agent has been busted under the Roh administration.
Between 1996 and 1997, he infiltrated South Korea several times using a laundered Thai passport. He spent his time taking photos of potential North Korean targets, including naval radar stations, U.S. military installations and nuclear power stations.
He recently reentered the nation with a forged Filipino passport, but this time was caught just before he could leave the country.
NIS arrested him at a hotel in Seoul. During the arrest they confiscated his Filipino passport, some 3,188 U.S. dollars, an encrypted CD, fake IDs and other goodies.
Filipino police, meanwhile, confiscated at his residence in the Philippines a camera, shortwave radio and a computer he used to transmit reports and receive instructions.
The agent, who belongs to the Korean Workers’ Party’s Bureau 35, entered South Korea three times between March 1996 and January 1998, posing as a Thai citizen. During his March 1996 and June 1997 trips he is suspected of photographing important facilities to confirm coordinates for precision attacks in a wartime situation.
Among the sites he photographed where the nuclear power station in Uljin, the naval radar station on Mt. Seongeo, Cheonan, the U.S. Yongsan Garrison, and the Defense Ministry and Headquarters of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also tried twice to take photographs of Cheong Wa Dae in 1996, but security was just too tough.
Last June, however, he came back with 10,000 U.S. dollars, a forged Filipino passport and orders to check out conditions for long-term infiltration.
What’s impressive is that the guy managed to launder his passport and name four times while in Southeast Asia from June 1993. At various times he’s operated under assumed Bengali, Thai, Chinese and Filipino identities.
This isn’t the first time a North Korean spy has been busted using a laundered passport. In 1996, a “Filipino Muslim” teaching Arabic Studies at Dankook University was busted when it was learned he was really a North Korean agent—see the NIS story for his most impressive passport laundering saga.
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The spy who came from the warm.
In case someone’s interesting what “Muhammad Kansu”, or Jeong Su-il (정수일) has been up to after he served his term, here are a few clues:
• Exchange between civilizations serial in Hankyoreh
• Rediscovering silk road (실크로드 재발견)
• List of his available works and translations(Aladdin) on Islam, premodern Korea’s relations to other nations etc.
Mr Jeong apparently is not insisting on returning to the embrace of the Dear General, but he seems to have been adopted by some of the unification-minded circles as a some kind of an example of the tragedies of the Korean division, as shown by him being awarded the Buddhist Human Rights Award (see Ohmy).
Is the Muhammad Kansu the former Dankook or Dongkook professor of Middle Eastern studies who fooled SK counter-intelligence for years because he belonged to an anti-Nork organization and had a moustache and beard?
I hear all the communist groups in South Korea are ready to stage violent demonstrations to have the man (sent by their commander in chief to work for Korean reunification) released.
But…but! I thought that the North Koreans were the South Koreans’ brothers! Why would they spy and look at things like nuclear power plants? I am surprised the the Roh administration has the balls to actually bust a spy. Perhaps he will be set free, lest they offend the short, fat dude in
Pyongyang.
Why send spies at all? Couldn’t the teachers union or some of Roh’s staffers do just as good a job?
I think a post I read here a few days ago says it all. I apologize for not responding back to the brilliant post, here is the gist. The South Koreans get by paying less for their security so they can aid and abed their enemy to the north. Of course Korea does not want the sugar daddy to leave… that would disrupt the co-dependant betrayal.
Spies are just naughty cousins up to their old antics. This country will continue to spiral until they stop acting like (hate to say it) world niggers. This is not a deprecating comment on blacks; this is separate and endemic of the communist path DJ and Roh has put this country on. The fact that the savings on defense is being sent to the enemy is a slam dunk on the stupidity of the current administration. I hope for the sake of my friends and family that brains come to the show. Korea deserves better than it is getting.
Korea indeed deserves better than it is getting, but do the people, who elected their current president and even saved him from an impeachment, do they deserve better or are they just paying the price of their own mistake and should continue to be paying it?
The story of Muhammad Kansu is an interesting one. We should probably cover it some time at Frog in a Well. I love the fact that he not only had the balls to pretend to be an Filipino of Arab origin (are there many such people?) but he was also a minor academic celebrity. I wonder if he took any tips from previous academic spies like Anthony Blunt?
Of course I mustn’t leave the Marmot’s without adding the usual insightful analysis about how the South Koreans are nothing more than an ungrateful bunch of welfare munching babymothers who just love get beat up by their Nork pimp… blah blah yada yada.
This is only spy caught in last ten years. Why now? Why him? Why would pro-North government arrest one of their own?
I think this guy was about to blow his cover and go to media about KJI’s plan on attacking SK in near future. A detailed plan about who, what, when and how.
Korean CIA got him now and will lock him up in nowhere-place so that he cannot go to media.
They are working for North Korea.
I think the best way to deal with this is to give him $500 million and 100 tons of rice in exchange for his promise not to spy anymore.
This news is yet another clear indictment of the Sunshine Policy and the failure of those that follow such to acknowledge the reality of the situation in Korea. This must also be only the tip of the iceberg since who knows how much has been going on before this.
Knew you’d come around someday.
Come to the Dark Side, Kotaji. Come to the Dark Side.
Ok boys, let’s increase the deployment of US personnel by 8000% in Korea just to make sure we got things covered.
As an American it’s a comforting sight to see our boys in drab green walking along the streets in Seoul, I get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside when I see they are packing too. I caught on the news this week that two off-duty American military personnel rushed into a second-story, burning apartment to rescue a mother and her paralyzed (from the waist down) daughter.
–Remort
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I Spy a Unification Minister…
No, not a real north Korean spy , just a Korean politician calling it like he sees it :
In the past, North Korea s spying activities were so sensational and politically powerful that military regimes even concocted spy rings to win support in the…..