North Korean defector in espionage case denies brokerage allegations

A North Korean defector involved in a high-profile espionage case flatly denied new allegations on Monday that he earned money by helping other defectors in South Korea send money to their homeland. Yoo Woo-seong, a North Korean defector in South Korea with an ethnic Chinese background, is standing trial on charges of giving information on about 200 defectors living in South Korea to Pyongyang. Fresh allegations have recently emerged that he pocketed 400 million won (US$374,000) as commission by helping fellow defectors remit their money to their families in the impoverished communist nation between February 2007 and August 2009, according to sources at Seoul's prosecution office. Yoo, however, denied the allegations, saying that he just helped a fellow businessman. "I just opened a bank account under my name for a distant relative living in China," Yoo was quoted by his lawyers as saying, adding that he has never thought about the chances that his bank account would be used for illegal remittance. The Seoul Eastern Prosecutors' Office suspended Yoo's indictment in 2010 due to the lack of evidence and sensitivity of the issue, the sources said. There is widespread speculation that North Korean defectors settling in the South provide financial help to their families facing chronic hunger in the North, which is illegal under the South Korean law. More than 26,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. The defections have taken place mostly since the 1990s, and the border between the two Koreas remains heavily fortified. The case involving Yoo, a 34-year-old who worked for the Seoul city government, began when prosecutors charged him with carrying out espionage for Pyongyang's spy agency. After a local district court acquitted Yoo of the espionage charges in August 2013, allegations have risen that Seoul's main intelligence agency had obtained or produced fake Chinese immigration records and handed them over to the prosecution to frame Yoo. Amid mounting suspicions, Seoul prosecutors have since launched an investigation to look into whether the National Intelligence Service was involved in forging the key evidence in a court case.