Jeong led a really interesting and tragic life - a great example of how a divided nation ruled by tyranny screwed over people's lives.
Born in China under ethnic Korean parents, raised and educated as an elite, he chose North Korean citizenship in 1963, probably out of patriotism. And what did the North Korean government do? Tell this linguistic genius to disguise himself as a Lebanese, enter South Korea, and lead a double life while spying for NK.
And he did lead a double life, getting married, doing a ton of research on medieval Arab-Korean relation as Muhammed Kansu, an "Arabic scholar interested in Korean history," while faxing mostly low-quality information to North Korea. After all, he was a scholar at heart, not a spy, and there's a limit to how much useful information one can get living a day life as a professor of history.
After his cover was blown in 1996, he was sentenced to 12 years of prison. He reportedly told his wife to forget him (because he was already married in North Korea), but the wife persisted.
He was released from prison in 2000 and fully pardoned in 2003. (I think it helped that his spying was largely ineffective.) He came back to academia, studying the history of Arab-Korean relation, now as his true self.
He died without ever meeting his first wife in North Korea again.
Jeong led a really interesting and tragic life - a great example of how a divided nation ruled by tyranny screwed over people's lives.
Born in China under ethnic Korean parents, raised and educated as an elite, he chose North Korean citizenship in 1963, probably out of patriotism. And what did the North Korean government do? Tell this linguistic genius to disguise himself as a Lebanese, enter South Korea, and lead a double life while spying for NK.
And he did lead a double life, getting married, doing a ton of research on medieval Arab-Korean relation as Muhammed Kansu, an "Arabic scholar interested in Korean history," while faxing mostly low-quality information to North Korea. After all, he was a scholar at heart, not a spy, and there's a limit to how much useful information one can get living a day life as a professor of history.
After his cover was blown in 1996, he was sentenced to 12 years of prison. He reportedly told his wife to forget him (because he was already married in North Korea), but the wife persisted.
He was released from prison in 2000 and fully pardoned in 2003. (I think it helped that his spying was largely ineffective.) He came back to academia, studying the history of Arab-Korean relation, now as his true self.
He died without ever meeting his first wife in North Korea again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeong_Su-il