THE SPIES FROM THE SEA

Just after midnight last Wednesday, a taxi chugging along the Kangnung highway on the east coast of South Korea threw its headlights briefly on a group of young men sitting by the roadside. The area is about 75 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone and has more than once been the scene of infiltration by North Korean spies and saboteurs. Taxi driver Lee Jin Gyu noted the short haircuts and similar clothing on the young men and began to wonder about them. After dropping off his passenger, he drove back to the spot. The men had left, but he took a careful look around. “I went down to the sea,” he says, “and saw something that looked like a dolphin or a submarine. I was certain it wasn’t a fishing boat, so I reported it to the police.”

It was indeed a submarine, a gray-hulled North Korean Sang-O class, 325-ton boat, and it was jammed onto a reef, rolling helplessly in the surf. Lee’s discovery touched off one of postwar South Korea’s biggest manhunts as tens of thousands of troops pursued up to 26 North Koreans who had been aboard the sub. By week’s end 20 of them were dead, one was in custody and at least one, possibly seven, was still at large in the area’s wild mountains. In separate clashes with North Koreans, three South Korean soldiers were killed.

Cold war dramas are an anachronism in most of the world today. Not so in Korea. The Seoul government quickly labeled the landing “an act of military provocation” and demanded that the North call a halt to violations of the armistice agreement that ended the war in 1953. The DMZ is the world’s most heavily armed border, and probably the tensest. With North Korea mired in famine and economic stagnation, there is considerable apprehension among its neighbors that the Stalinist government in Pyongyang might seek a solution in a desperate attack on the South.

If the North is contemplating an invasion, this did not look like the prelude to it. Within half an hour of the submarine’s discovery, a platoon of soldiers was guarding the wreck. Navy special forces found a machine gun, a rifle, ammunition and 100 grenades aboard, along with a note that read, “We must accomplish the mission without fail.” Two hours later, the Defense Ministry declared a full combat alert and launched the hunt. Tens of thousands of troops, police and reservists ringed an area 30 miles in radius and began a sweep through the rugged valleys.

Late on Wednesday afternoon the searchers made their first contact. In a clearing atop a mountain about three miles from the stranded submarine they found the corpses of 11 North Koreans. At first officials in Seoul speculated that they had committed suicide rather than surrender: all were shot in the head. But it turned out they had also been shot in the abdomen and from behind with a rifle. Among the dead were the submarine commander, a colonel, his deputy and the navigator. South Korean officials suspect the best-trained infiltrators in the group had killed the crew in order to improve their own chances of survival.

Seven armed North Koreans were tracked down and killed in separate clashes the next day. One intruder, however, was captured alive. Under interrogation, Lee Kwang Soo at first refused to talk, saying his family in the North would suffer for it. Then, after downing a few drinks of soju, the local gin, he became voluble but also contradictory. According to his latest account, Lee was a member of the crew of the sub, which left North Korean waters on Sept. 14 with seven infiltrators and 19 crew. Their mission, he says, was to spy on an airport, radar installations and civilian preparedness. On Sept. 15 they put three men ashore to observe the Kangnung airport while the sub cruised back and forth along the coastline. They picked up the three spies last Tuesday and were intending to head for home when the sub ran aground on the reef.

Among those still at large, Lee claims, are three “special commandos” wearing South Korean army uniforms and helmets and carrying rifles, grenades and pistols. The South Korean military has warned villagers in the area to be alert. Well-trained operatives like these, categorized by the South as “communist guerrillas” rather than civilian spies, can travel up to 6 m.p.h. and are willing to attack villagers to get food. It is possible they have taken refuge with a spy.

For Seoul and its ally, the U.S., the sub is an intelligence prize: very little is known about the primitive North Korean subs that patrol the coast, and the Pentagon may now learn how to track their acoustic signatures. Still, South Korea is rightly protesting this raid as a violation of the armistice and the spirit of the post-cold war times. Some Koreans wonder whether President Kim Jong Il has a firm grip on things in the North or if his military might be getting out of hand. Analysts say it’s more like business as usual. Pyongyang refused to accept a protest note last week. By Seoul’s count, last week’s episode, while the most dramatic in recent years, was the 310th infiltration by the North in the past 25 years and the 14th since 1990.

–Reported by Stella Kim/Seoul