Former North Korean Agent Says Still Many Spies in South Korea Looking to Strain Relations with Japan

The Yomiuri Shimbun

7:00 JST, May 19, 2025

Pyonyang is trying to make the maximum use of anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea, former North Korean agent Kim Dong-sik told The Yomiuri Shimbun.

As an agent of the predecessor to the North’s Cultural Exchange Bureau, Kim was involved in forming a spy network in South Korea.

“Worsening Japan-South Korea relations would weaken South Korea, creating a favorable environment for North Korea,” Kim said, explaining why Pyongyang was instructing its agents to inflame anti-Japanese sentiment. “Anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea will never disappear, and North Korea will make use of it relentlessly.”

According to Kim, North Korean agents “start by recruiting a core figure” to put together a spy network. After teaching them how to build and run a network in the South, the agents return to North Korea to give instructions. Both sides then meet regularly in “safe places for North Korea,” such as Southeast Asia, to verify the person’s loyalty and also check “if their ideology has remained unchanged.”

In November, a South Korean court found that a man in his 50s received instructions and ran a spy network while meeting with North Korean agents once a year in China, Vietnam and elsewhere.

“There are many networks in South Korea besides the one that was uncovered,” Kim said, adding that recent convictions may have done some damage to North Korea’s spy network, although it was “only partial.”

South Korea has been in turmoil since Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law last December.

“Creating new conflict is important,” said Kim, expounding on a spy’s mission. “But they also view it as important to heighten existing chaos and conflict.”

— By Kazuki Koike

Kim Dong-sik

Born in South Hwanghae Province, North Korea, Kim graduated from Kim Jong Il University of Military Politics and served in a foreign intelligence agency from 1981 to 1995. In 1995, Kim went undercover in South Korea but was detained after a gunfight with police. After switching sides, he analyzed the North’s operations in the South Korean military.