SUWON, SOUTH KOREA — She's called the Mata Hari of North Korea, a temptress-spy who for years used her sensual charms to seduce South Korean military officers into giving up secrets.
The method was potentially lethal: Won Jeong-hwa reportedly plotted to assassinate South Korean agents with poisoned needles provided by handlers from Pyongyang.
The 34-year-old North Korean native was arrested during the summer along with her 63-year-old stepfather and accused of engaging in espionage and deceit for seven years after defecting to South Korea. Under questioning, she detailed for investigators a double life working for one of the world's most repressive regimes.
The case of Won, only the second North Korean spy to face trial here in the last decade, has riveted the South Korean public and embarrassed the nation's vaunted intelligence network. The press has dubbed her Mata Hari, after the notorious dancer-turned-World War I agent.
After arriving in 2001 at Seoul's Incheon airport, Won was touted by South Korean authorities as a model defector and assigned to tour military bases to lecture troops on the evils of the Stalinist state.
All the while, prosecutors said, she pursued her real agenda: collecting photos of military installations and weapons systems and keeping lists of North Korean defectors and personal data about Southern military officers.
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North denies association
The life and motives of Won remain a mystery. Was she a major North Korean operative, as authorities claim? Or merely a hapless former thief brainwashed by the North to provide information that amounted to nothing more than what could be found on the Internet, as her court-appointed lawyer insists?
North Korea denies that Won, who is awaiting sentencing, was its agent, calling her "human scum" and describing the case as a "threadbare charade" to embarrass the North, which has remained technically at war with the South since their conflict ended in an armistice in 1953.
Last week, Won appeared in a crowded courtroom in Suwon as a three-judge panel considered her fate. Dressed in prison-issue top and pants, her hair tied in a ponytail, she avoided eye contact with observers and focused on the judges as the prosecutor read a long list of charges against her.
One of her main missions, the prosecution said, was to locate Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking North Korean defector, who is guarded by police against assassination attempts.
