S. Korea: Northern spy posed as defector

SEOUL, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- South Korea has caught a Northern spy and would-be assassin posing as a defector, its intelligence agency said Wednesday.

Ri Dong-sam, 46, was arrested by the Seoul city prosecutor Tuesday for plotting to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop, a leading ideologue of the Pyongyang regime and onetime mentor to dictator Kim Jong-il who had defected to the South, officials told The New York Times.

Hwang, 87, died of heart failure Oct. 9 in a safe house in Seoul, where he had lived for years under government protection, but police said Wednesday his death had no connection to the arrest.

The South Koreans said Ri was an agent of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea's top spy organization.

He began five years of training in North Korea in 1998, crossed into China in 2004, and made his way in December 2009 to either Thailand or Laos, South Korean media reported.

In May, two other potential assassins from the North who were hunting Hwang were arrested in Seoul. The two men, majors in the North Korean Army, also were posing as defectors. They were convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison in July.