NIS bares N.K. attempts to terrorize Hwang

Kim Bo-Hyun, third deputy director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), disclosed on Thursday that the NIS received information last May from an intelligence organization of an ally that North Korea was collecting information necessary to terrorize Hwang Jang-Yop, former secretary of the North Korean Workers' Party, who defected to the South.

Attending a meeting of the National Assembly Intelligence Committee in the day, the deputy NIS director said that, in view of the fact that the North has made terrorizing Hwang a primary goal, it was obliged to take special steps to protect him, allowing him to live at a "safe house."

He noted that the Pyongyang broadcasts repeatedly threatened to take stern retaliatory action against him for his defamation of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and that the NIS received intelligence reports that Pyongyang was attempting to assassinate the North Korean defector by utilizing Korean residents in China.

Referring to the alleged house arrest of Hwang, the intelligence official said that Hwang has given 178 lectures, 258 meetings and 33 media interviews since his defection from the North, and has also published 12 books in eight volumes and numerous essays. He added that Hwang was allowed to converse with anyone through his personal or cellular phones, noting that he has therefore never been forbidden from contacting with outside people.

Kim went on to assert that Hwang stuck to prejudices and egoistic attachment in order to overcome compunctions deriving from his erroneous predictions of the collapse of the North Korean regime. The NIS official also contended that Hwang sparked the controversy in a scheme to strengthen his position with the expansion of Cold-War logic.

Meanwhile, Rep. Kim Myung-Sup of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party revealed that he had a phone conversation with Hwang and that the North Korean defector told him that some of the media reports differed from his intent, adding that Hwang might have felt insecurity when he ventured to attend the committee session.

Lee Chol-Hi klimt@donga.com