Five S. Koreans Charged with Spying for Pyongyang

South Korean prosecutors said Thursday they had charged five people with spying for North Korea, one of whom had been ordered personally by the North's founding father to organize revolution in the South.

The five were accused of leading an underground communist ring on instructions from North Korea's ruling communist party, the prosecutors said in a statement.

In 1993 the head of the group, surnamed Kim, allegedly met the North's late President Kim Il-Sung, known as the Great Leader, who told him to organize a network for "a communist revolution in the South," according to the statement.

It did not specify where the meeting took place.

Kim, 48, and the four others collected information including military secrets and passed it to the North, said the prosecutors.

"They obtained information from their acquaintances in the military and political circles. One of the group members was an aide to a former National Assembly speaker," Lee Jin-Han, a chief prosecutor on the case, told AFP.

The group ran a small technology firm in South Korea to finance their operations after funding from the impoverished North dwindled, he said.

Espionage charges in South Korea can carry a maximum penalty of death.

Crackdowns on pro-Pyongyang activists and spies have been on the increase since the conservative government of President Lee Myung-Bak took office in early 2008 and rolled back a policy of reconciliation towards the North.

South Korea's prosecutor general, Han Sang-Dae, who took office earlier this month, vowed to crack down hard on pro-Pyongyang leftists.

Tensions have been high since the South accused the North of torpedoing a warship in March 2010, killing 46 sailors.

Pyongyang denied the charge but went on to shell a border island last November, killing four South Koreans including two civilians.