N. Korea puts spy agencies under military control in major shakeup

SEOUL, May 10 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has carried out a reshuffle of government
organizations, shifting the jurisdiction over its overseas espionage and cash cow
operations from the Workers' Party to the military, sources said Sunday.
The North has separated its two major spying and cash-generating overseas trade
units -- Room 35 and Operation Unit -- from the Workers' Party and transferred
them to the People's Armed Forces, the sources said on condition of anonymity.
The Operation Unit is known to train and send agents to South Korea, the United
States and Japan, but its recent operations are believed to have shifted toward
trades of arms, drugs and fake bills.
Room 35 is North Korea's intelligence unit in charge of collecting information
from South Korea, Japan, China, Southeast Asia and Europe.
Kim Hyon-hui, one of the two North Korean agents who blew up a Korean Air flight
over Myanmar in 1987, was believed to have belonged to the Room 35 and to have
been trained in the Operation Unit.
"North Korea's Operation Unit handles a large amount of cash through illegal
activities such as counterfeiting currency, manufacturing drugs and exporting
arms," a source said. "With the Operation Unit now under its wing, the North
Korean military will have a major source of independent financing."
The latest shakeup appears to be intended to address overlapped functions among
government organizations and raise their overall efficiency, according to North
Korea watchers.
The sources said North Korea may be trying to shed a terrorism-related image from
its ruling Workers' Party, which has tagged along since the 1987 flight bombing.
The latest U.S. report on terrorism-sponsoring nations, released on April 30,
said that North Korea "was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since
the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987."
The U.S. government removed North Korea from its list of terrorism-sponsoring
nations in October as the North had agreed to follow steps to dismantle its
nuclear program.
The denuclearization process, however, was stalled late last year over a dispute
on how to verify North Korea's past nuclear activities.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)