`N.Korea finances party in SK through tech company`

`N.Korea finances party in SK through tech company`. August. 26, 2011 03:35. verso@donga.com minki@donga.com.

“Wangjaesan” is an underground party that received financial resources from an IT company set up with technology offered by North Korea, South Korean prosecutors said Thursday.

The party was created by the order of the North’s propaganda division and has been active for a decade in the South. The division sent encrypted orders to the party using steganography, a cutting-edge communications method, via Google and Gmail, whose servers are located overseas.

This is the first time for steganography to be detected in a spy investigation.

The Seoul Prosecutors Office said it indicted five Wangjaesan party members including the party head, the heads of the Incheon and Seoul branches, the latter who served as an aide to the National Assembly speaker, and a contact with forming a group benefiting the enemy and sneaking in and out of South Korea, both of which are violations of the National Security Act.

Prosecutors said the suspects set up the tech company Jiwonnet at the behest of the “255 Division” of the North Korean ruling Workers’ Party in June 2002, and developed a license plate recognition system for parking by using the core technology provided by the North.

The company`s profits were used for propaganda, with annual revenue reaching 2.2 billion won (2.03 million dollars).

Wangjaesan sent a loyalty pledge to the North after the sinking of the South Korean military vessel Cheonan in March last year, saying, “We will safeguard the Central Committee of the (Workers`) Party headed by Kim Jong Il and become a gun bomb for a victorious revolution by upholding his successor.”

Even after the North`s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November last year, Wangjaesan said, “The enemy’s attempt to overhaul the DPRK (Democratic People`s Republic of Korea, the North`s official name) became helpless before the DPRK’s powerful revolutionary force.”

Wangjaesan created “Wolmido,” an Incheon-based party, in August 2005, and “Inwangsan,” a Seoul-based party, in December 2005, prosecutors said. The party head is from the group that worships the North`s self-reliance philosophy of “juche” and is known to have received orders from the North`s then leader Kim Il Sung on Aug. 26, 1993.

South Korean intelligence confirmed that Wangjaesan received an order to collect military intelligence by winning over soldiers from the 225 Division and is conducting a joint investigation with the South Korean Defense Security Command.