North Korean ‘spy’ charged over Kim Jong-nam hit-and-run plot

South Korean prosecutors have filed formal spying charges against a North Korean man involved in a bid to maim the eldest son of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, a report said on Tuesday.

A prosecution service official confirmed the spying charges against the unidentified man, saying he had arrived in South Korea in March posing as a refugee who had fled the North via China.

But the official declined to comment on a Yonhap news agency report that the man had confessed to being part of a plot to stage a hit-and-run car accident in China in 2010 targeting Kim’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam.

Kim Jong-nam fell out of favour with his father following a botched attempt in 2001 to secretly enter Japan using a fake passport and visit Disneyland.

He has since lived in virtual exile, mainly in Macau.

Last year he told a Japanese newspaper that he opposed the idea of the North’s dynastic power transfer.