Hard Labour In North Korea for South's 'Spies'

Two South Korean pastors have been sentenced to hard labour for the rest of their lives after being arrested by North Korea and accused of spying.

Kim Kuk-gi and Choe Chun-gil have offered no independent explanation of how they came to be in Kim Jong-Un's dictatorship.

But at a press conference organised by North Korea after their arrests, flanked by their security service handlers, the pair said they were bribed by agents from Seoul's spy agency to collect information on the communist nation and criticise its system.

North Korea's state news agency KCNA said prosecutors alleged they were involved in gathering data on the Supreme Leader and other state and military secrets, and passing them back to South Korea's intelligence services.

A trial heard that the pastors had confessed to their crimes, which also included "state-sponsored political terrorism" on behalf of the US, according to the news agency.

Prosecutors asked for the death penalty, the KCNA report said, but the "defence counsel" argued that it would be better if the pair could witness "for themselves the true picture of the prospering" of North Korea by being kept alive in jail.

Mr Kim and Mr Choe were detained in March and, in addition to spying, Mr Kim was initially accused of spreading "religious propaganda".

KCNA reported he told the earlier "press conference" he ran an "underground church" in the Chinese city of Dandong, which has a large Korean community and is a hub of both official and illicit cross-border trade.

Mr Choe "confessed" at the news conference that he had sent several North Korean residents to a South Korean priest for "religious education" and that he had tasked others with setting up an "underground church" in the North.

Both also "confessed" to a wide variety of other allegations including taking pictures of a border railway station used by Kim Jong-Un when entering China, printing and distributing cartoons about North Korea, arranging the collection of samples of earth near military bases in the North and arranging the import of sex videos into the North.

Two other South Koreans are currently being held in the North.

Kim Jung-wook and Joo Won-moon, a 21-year-old South Korean student with a US green card, were said to have been involved in missionary work.

The sentences came as the UN Commissioner for Human Rights opened its first office in Seoul - a move North Korea regards as hostile.

Its government said it would "mercilessly punish" South Korea for allowing the office to open.

Seoul's unification ministry voiced "strong" regret over the North's decision to hand down "grave" punishment to the South Korean nationals.

"We call for the North to immediately free and repatriate those four detainees, including Kim and Choe. The government will do its best to bring them back home," the ministry said.

North Korea is a totalitarian communist state where religion is forbidden. It has long been labelled one of the world's worst human rights violators but claims such criticism is a US-led attempt to topple its regime.