A ROK Drop favorite Park Sang-hak and other North Korean defectors have had security measures improved for them when the ROK National Intelligence Service (NIS) learned of specific information about North Korean terror and assassination attempts within the ROK. In the case of Park Sang-hak the North Koreans have tried to kill him before:
Following the latest intelligence assessment that North Korea is planning terrorist attacks against the South, security measures to protect high-value targets including influential defectors have been beefed up.
The National Police Agency has reinforced the security detail for former North Korean diplomat Ko Young-hwan, vice president of the Institute for National Security Strategy of the National Intelligence Service (NIS). He was put under the highest level of monitoring, as the intelligence community obtained a death threat from the North.
Ko served in the North’s Foreign Ministry from 1978 to 1991. He defected from his post as the first secretary of the North Korean Embassy in the Republic of Congo in 1991.
“I was told by the police that they had obtained specific threats,” Ko told Yonhap News Agency. “I was normally guarded by two agents, but the number has increased to eight.”
The police also improved security measures for Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector currently leading the campaign to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border using balloons.
The North has previously assassinated a high-profile defector in the South. Yi Han-yong, nephew of the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s mistress Song Hye-rim, defected to the South in 1982 while studying in Switzerland. He was shot in February 1997 by two assailants suspected of being agents from North Korean special forces. He died in a hospital later that month.
The NIS informed the government and the ruling party Thursday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had ordered the country’s intelligence agencies to prepare for terror attacks against the South. In addition to threats on cyberattacks and attacks on public facilities, assassination and kidnapping of high-value targets were also feared. [Joong Ang lbo]
