SEOUL: A South Korean court yesterday sentenced a convicted North Korean spy to four years in prison for collecting information on the South’s intelligence agents working in China.
The 43-year-old had insisted she was just a housewife who had been forcibly recruited by North Korean intelligence when she went to China to find work to feed her family in the North.
The court in the southern city of Suwon rejected her story and said her actions had led to the arrest of a South Korean agent.
“She was involved in a very serious crime which threatened the existence and safety of our nation,” the court declared.
The woman had arrived in Seoul in June as a refugee, but was detained after questioning by security authorities.
Thousands of North Korean spies have been arrested in South Korea since the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War.
Nobel laureate releases book
BEIJING: Chinese Nobel literature laureate Mo Yan released a new book yesterday charting his experience receiving the award in Sweden last December, state media reported.
The book, titled “Grand Ceremony”, is his first to be published since he won the 2012 Nobel Prize, Xinhua news agency said. It was released at a national book fair.
Mo, speaking at a ceremony on China’s southern island of Hainan, said he wanted to give readers a “first-hand” glimpse into his greatest achievement, the report said.
“The new book also shows my great eagerness to return to my desk to write my next book,” he was quoted as saying.
The author, born Guan Moye, whose pen name means “not speak”, won the Nobel in October for what judges called his “hallucinatory realism”.
His works cover some of the darkest periods of China’s recent history, and are often infused with politics and a black, cynical humour.
Though he has won praise from literary critics, Chinese dissidents have attacked him as a Communist stooge.
Death toll in Indonesia boat mishap now 18
SAMARINDA: The death toll from a boat accident in the Indonesian part of Borneo island rose to 18 yesterday with five people still missing, a provincial governor said.
The boat carrying workers from a plywood company sank on Wednesday after being hit by a huge wave as it travelled across the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan province.
Provincial governor Awang Faroek Ishak said a total of 18 bodies had now been pulled from the water, up from a death toll of three on Thursday.
“Twenty-one people have been rescued, and we will continue to search for the five passengers still missing,” Ishak said in a statement.
There had been conflicting reports about the numbers on the boat, but the governor said it was now confirmed it had been carrying 44.
Disaster agency official Wahyu Didit said none of the bodies recovered were wearing life jackets. Boat accidents are common in Indonesia, where vessels have a poor safety record and the population of 240 million is scattered over a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands.
Agencies
