The sentence of Krasnohvardiyske district court in Dnipropetrovsk in line with which North Korean spies Ryu Songchoel and Lee Thekil were sentenced to eight years of imprisonment for spying against Ukraine has come into force. The spies will serve their sentences in Ukraine, Segodnya newspaper reports.
A source at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office told the newspaper that neither the defendants who pleaded guilty, nor their lawyers filed any protests.
It had been expected that the authorities and special services of North Korea would seek the extradition of their citizens. “However, the reaction of Pyongyang was passive: they failed, that is their problem. However, at home the punishment could have been much more severe, including the death penalty that exists in the criminal legislation of that country,” the source said.
Earlier reports said that the spies worked under the cover of the North Korean trade mission in Minsk. Having arrived in Dnipropetrovsk from Minsk, the two Koreans attempted to recruit an employee of the Pivdenne Design Bureau. They were interested in gaining classified information concerning space rocketry equipment, particularly fuel systems for spacecraft. The employee of Pivdenne Design Bureau reported his contacts with foreigners to a Security Service office, which exempted him from liability for collaboration with foreign intelligence services.
The Security Service devised a plan to lure the spies into a trap. The spies were caught red-handed, when they were photographing doctoral and candidate’s thesis classified ‘Secret’. The scientific theses dealt with new progressive technologies in building rocket systems, spacecraft, liquid-fuel engines, rocket fuel supply systems, and other know-how.
By sentencing the suspects to eight years in prison each, the court took into consideration as an aggravating circumstance that the divulgence of this information would have caused serious damage to Ukraine’s national security, and the North Korean space rocket industry would have gained access to a technology based on achievements of Ukrainian rocket scientists and would have significantly expanded its strategic potential.
