That was until South Korean counterintelligence officers caught up with the details of her past in North Korea, where they said she had been involved in the effort to lure or blackmail North Korean defectors in the South into coming back to the North. He tried to persuade them to return to the North by putting their North Korean relatives on the phone with them. One of the defectors, Kang Chol-woo, and his girlfriend, also a North Korean defector in the South, returned to the North through China in 2016 and later appeared on North Korean TV. South Korea has put its guard up, catching North Korean agents disguised as defectors who entered South Korea on clandestine missions to assassinate fellow defectors or lure them back to the North. But South Korean counterintelligence officials also have a history of fabricating evidence in their overzealous hunt for North Korean spies.

Source: bd News24 November 30, 2021 05:04 UTC