South Korea charges five with spying for North

SEOUL, Dec 8 (Reuters) Five people including a Korean American have been charged by South Korean prosecutors with spying to aid the communist North in the largest espionage case since the two Koreas began political reconciliation in 2000.

A senior official of a leftist South Korean opposition party was among those charged for violating the National Security Law and conspiring to pass state secrets to the communist government in the North, the prosecution said in a statement.

The prosecution charged the five with ''forming a group to aid the enemy'', spying and telecommunications law violations, the statement said.

''It is the biggest spy case since June 15,'' it said, referring to the date the leaders of North and South Korea met in an unprecedented summit in 2000 and pledged reconciliation.

The prosecutors named US citizen Michael Jang, 44, as the ring leader, saying they suspect him of first making contact with North Korean agents in 1998 in China.

Jang is suspected of passing on directives from the North to junior ring leaders including calls to intensify anti-US demonstrations timed to US President George W Bush's visit to South Korea last year to attend an Asia-Pacific summit, the prosecution said.

The ring members also periodically sent reports on political movements in the South and analyses on political leaders, it said.

Information contained in those reports was sensitive enough to be considered state secrets, a prosecutor was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.

The five charged today could not be reached for comment. They were arrested in October and have been in detention.

A team of lawyers representing the suspects said the five would be vindicated in trial. ''The indictments are based on the prosecution's opinion,'' they said in a statement.

The opposition Democratic Labour Party, whose deputy secretary general Choi Ki-young is among the five, said the investigation lacked integrity.

Until the South's first open and direct election for president in 1987, thousands of South Koreans had been imprisoned on charges of spying for North Korea by authoritarian leaders in Seoul, who used the arrest to crack down on dissent.

REUTERS AB KN1512