Navy sailor charged with posting pro-North flyers, leaking warship location

Military prosecutors have indicted a South Korean Navy sailor on charges of disseminating pro-North Korean materials and leaking the location of a naval vessel while operations were ongoing, the Defense Counterintelligence Command said Tuesday.

Defense Minister Shin Won-sik speaks during a visit to the Defense Counterintelligence Command on Dec. 14. [MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEFENSE]

Military prosecutors have indicted a South Korean Navy sailor on charges of disseminating pro-North Korean materials and leaking the location of a naval vessel while operations were ongoing, the Defense Counterintelligence Command said Tuesday.

The petty officer second class, whose name has not yet been disclosed, is accused of using his personal mobile phone to relay classified information regarding the location of a warship under his unit’s command to a Chinese national.

The sailor is also accused of posting flyers praising Kim Il Sung, the late founder of the North Korean regime and grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un, in the stalls of bathrooms in his barracks.

According to the Defense Counterintelligence Command, the sailor viewed pro-Pyongyang websites targeting South Koreans and made the posters at home while on leave in November last year.

The posters also included language praising the North’s ruling Kim family and the regime’s Juche ideology, commonly interpreted as advocating the regime’s self-reliance.

Under the National Security Act, South Koreans are banned from praising the North. The maximum sentence for violations is seven years’ imprisonment.

The soldier was arrested after another soldier reported the flyers to the Defense Counterintelligence Command, which dispatched agents to investigate and confiscate the pro-Pyongyang materials.

During their investigation, counterintelligence agents also discovered that the soldier had a personal mobile phone, despite the ban on using smartphones while on naval assignments.

The counterintelligence command referred the petty officer to military prosecutors on April 6.

Speaking anonymously, a military official said that the sailor was charged without detention but has been excluded from taking part in duties at sea.

The petty officer is due to be tried in a military court before being discharged, at which point his case will be transferred to a civilian court with jurisdiction over his residence.

The accused soldier began his mandatory military service in May 2022. In South Korea, all able-bodied men must serve at least 18 months of compulsory military service.

The sailor is not the first to have acted in North Korea’s interests.

In April last year, the Defense Counterintelligence Command and the National Police Agency discovered that North Korean hackers plied a South Korean Navy captain with cryptocurrency to induce him to leak military secrets and even attempted to hack a military network.

The following July, a soldier in a Navy military police unit was caught showing a North Korean propaganda video to his fellow soldiers and was subsequently charged with violating the National Security Act.

The Defense Counterintelligence Command vowed to “thoroughly analyze and continuously identify leaks and acts of espionage by active-duty soldiers.”

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]