SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea sentenced two men from the South to a life of hard labor on espionage charges Tuesday, and the United Nations opened an office in Seoul to investigate human rights in the North.
North Korea first announced the arrests of the men, Kim Kuk-gi, 60, and Choe Chun-gil, 55, in March, accusing them of spying for the National Intelligence Service of the South Korean government.
On Tuesday, the North's state-run Korean Central Television said the country's highest court convicted Kim and Choe on charges of "collecting secrets on our party, state and military, and plotting to spread a bourgeois lifestyle into our republic," calling the actions part of American and South Korean attempts to undermine the North Korean government.
The North has not disclosed the circumstances of the South Koreans' arrests, except to say that the two operated out of Dandong, a Chinese city on the border with North Korea, and were caught after illegally entering the North.
In a news conference in March in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, the two men admitted to spying and apologized. During the conference, the North Korean secret police called Kim and Choe "heinous terrorists" who tried to harm the North's top leadership with assassination plots.
South Korea has denied that the men were spies and has called for their release.
The Unification Ministry of the South said Tuesday that it strongly protested the "unilateral" sentencing. It said the North had denied the men access to South Korean lawyers.
"It goes against international practices, human rights and humanitarianism for the North to take this unfair action without any prior explanation to our government or family members," the ministry said in a statement.
North Korea reported the sentencing on the same day that the United Nations opened a field office in Seoul that is dedicated to investigating reported human-rights abuses in the North.
South Korean officials said Monday that the North had protested the opening of the office by scrapping plans to attend the World University Games -- an international sporting event also known as the Universiade -- in the South Korean city of Gwangju next month. The North had said it planned to send 75 athletes and 33 sports officials to the event.
North Korea considers any outside attempt to investigate its human-rights record to be a political plot to unsettle its government. But the opening of the U.N. field office was welcomed by human-rights advocates.
"When he wakes up in the morning, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un should realize that there is now a team of dedicated professional investigators working full time to add to the factual record that will ultimately see him and his top officials brought before an international court," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
Last year, a U.N. panel recommended that the Security Council refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court for human-rights violations, which the panel said included operating prison gulags where hunger, torture and arbitrary executions were widespread.
North Korea is holding at least two other South Koreans, including Joo Won-moon, a New York University student, whom it said it detained in April after he crossed the river border from Dandong.
Last year, it sentenced a South Korean Baptist missionary to life at hard labor on charges of spying for the South and trying to set up an underground church to undermine the North Korean government.
A Section on 06/24/2015