Korea detains its former spies after protest

South Korean police today detained about 200 former South Korean spies who protested at the government’s alleged refusal to pay bonuses for secret missions they carried out in communist North Korea decades ago.

A total of 218 protesters were detained for questioning after they protested in Seoul with gas canisters and metal rods, said Sgt. Lee Sang-chul at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

In total 19 policemen and 10 demonstrators were injured, he said.

Protesters took over two lanes of a six-lane road and set fire to canisters of liquefied natural gas, but the police quickly put out the blazes. Traffic backed up in the area.

The former spies were demanding that the Government should follow through on alleged promises to give them cash bonuses, houses and other benefits for infiltrating North Korea between the end of the Korean War in 1953 and the early 1970s.

Thousands of operatives from the South were sent over the border to spy on the North during that period.

Some 300 of them were killed, 203 wounded, 130 arrested – and 4,849 are listed as missing, Korean officials say.

The number of operatives sent north diminished in the 1970s as the United States became capable of spying on the North with satellites.

Washington and Seoul are close allies and share information.

Last year, the South Korean National Assembly adopted a law to compensate families of former spies who were killed or wounded in action.

The law does not include payments for those who returned uninjured.

South Korean government officials claimed many of the spies have already received compensation paid at the end of their missions.