N. Korea claims it arrested 2 South Korean spies

North Korea claimed that it had arrested two "South Korean spies" as criminals in the act, who infiltrated into the North for spying and assassination plot. In response, the South Korean government said that the North is making groundless accusations, and urged the immediate release of South Korean citizens who are detained in the North.

The North’s Korean Central News Agency said on Thursday, “An international press conference by spies Kim Gook-gi and Choi Choon-gil from the puppet state’s intelligence service, who were arrested while engaging in acts of spying and plotting, was held at the People’s Culture Palace on Thursday.”

The North’s State Security Department said, “They are extremely vicious terrorists. They attempted to harm the supreme leadership by deploying the dirtiest and conspiring assassination method at control and instructions of spy agencies of the U.S. imperialists and the puppet group.” It also said that Kim and Choi contacted and collected intelligence mostly from ethnic Koreans in China, Chinese people, and North Korean merchants visiting China.

In their testimonies, Kim said he was born in Daejeon in 1954, and lived in Dandong, China from 2003, while Choi said he was born in Chuncheon in Gangwon Province in 1959, and lived in China from around the same period. According to the Korean Central News Agency, Kim and Choi collected and provided information on North Korea, or criticized or slandered the North Korea’s regime, after being bribed by agents of the South Korea’s National Intelligence Service in China. On the North’s accusations, the South’s National Intelligence Service said, “It is groundless. The National Intelligence Service has nothing to do with the matter.”

In its spokesman’s statement on Friday, Seoul’s Ministry of Unification said, “We deeply regret that the North is detaining our citizens Kim Gook-gi and Choi Choon-gil and making completely groundless claims.”

As two more South Koreans are being detained in the North after Kim Jeong-wook was taken into custody in October 2013, the number of South Koreans detained by the North increased to three. “The North offered a press conference on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the sinking of South Korean naval corvette Cheonan, because it wants to emphasize that South Korea and the U.S. are skillful in plotting and fabricating,” said a source in the South Korean government.