Excerpted from ENN Daily Intelligence Report-02/16/97- Vol. 3, No. 047

NORTH KOREAN DEFECTOR SHOT AND CRITICALLY WOUNDED

By Paul Anderson, ENN Correspondent

SEOUL (ENN) - A leading North Korean defector was shot by attackers on Saturday. He is reported to be in critical condition with gunshot wounds to the head and chest. Shot was 36-year-old Lee Han-young, who is the nephew of the former wife of the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. The shooting happened on Saturday night at Lee's apartment in the south Seoul suburb of Bundang.

A witness to the shooting told police that he heard a scream and looked across into Lee's apartment. He saw two men wearing raincoats holding a gun to the victim's head. Lee's wife said that Lee uttered only two words when she found him. The words were: "Spy, spy."

Lee was rushed to a local hospital. A doctor reported, "Two bullets have been removed from his head and chest, but his condition has not improved."

Lee had defected to South Korea in 1982. In an emergency meeting of security-related South Korean ministers after police found clues linking the shooting to North Korea, the ministers formally accused North Korea of trying to assassinate Lee. The Home Affairs Minister said that the shooting was "an assassination attempt by North Korean infiltrators."

This assassination attempt comes at a time of heightened tensions between North and South Korea over the decision of a leading North Korean politician to defect last week. Asking to defect to South Korea is Hwang Jang Yop, who took refuge in South Korea's consulate in Beijing, China. North Korea has accused South Korea of kidnapping Hwang and has threatened to retaliate.

In response to that threat, South Korea placed its 650,000-member military on high alert and increased security at airports, government facilities, embassies and ports to prevent a possible terrorist attack. Security has also been tightened around high-ranking government officials.

ERRI analysts say that these recent developments and those taking place in China, where North Korean Yop is taking refuge in the S. Korean embassy, could indicate a greater than ever chance of a military confrontation between the forces of the divided country. Yop's defection will surely provide additional insight into N. Korea's closed society and the N. Koreans probably fear that he will also disclose military dispositions and readiness information. The rice paddies are frozen (making a mechanized invasion possible) and many North Korean forces are forward deployed. Military and intelligence analysts are asking if these are the precursors to a clash on the 38th parallel.

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