North Korean spy Won Jeong Hwa, who was nabbed in July using her feminine wiles to coax state secrets out of South Korean officials, has been sentenced to five years imprisonment.

Won, who had potentially faced life in prison, had admitted in court to her guilt. She spoke in a soft voice at hearings and asked for leniency so that she can be reunited with the 7-year-old daughter she had with a businessman in China.

But prosecutors said she is hardly the meek woman who appeared in court.

They submitted pictures showing scars they said she received in commando training in the North.

South Korean media said Won tried to assassinate a South Korean military officer in Hong Kong using an aphrodisiac laced with poison but failed.

She also tried but failed to meet and assassinate Hwang Jang-yop, former North Korean communist party ideology chief and the highest-ranking North Korean to defect, reports said.

While these details are salacious and all, I really love the comment issued by North Korean officials.

The North’s official media denounced her as a traitor for leaving the country and said: “(Won is) human scum crazy for money, vanity and swindling.”

Sounds like me…

To quote the grand old Smiths: “Is it really so strange?”

Canadian researchers uncovered software residing on Chinese internet servers that is purportedly being used to “seek out and hold online text-based chats deemed to contain politically sensitive communications.”

Described as little more than a “flaw” in the TOM Online system by Skype spokeswoman Jennifer Caukin, who went on to say Skype was “very concerned to hear about the apparent security issue,” TOM Online was apparently quick to address the glitch after Skype alerted the China-based company, reports the Wall Street Journal.

While the report did not venture a connection between the security hole and the Chinese government, it revealed the discovery of an encryption key that could well have been used to easily decrypt and access personal user records, which included data on mobile phone accounts, mobile phone text messages, and Skype-TOM Online user information.

When you’re a hot female spy, you can always rely on good ol’ sex appeal to get the job done - a lesson apparently not lost on 34-year-old Won Jeong-hwa, a North-Korean refugee who turned out to be an enemy agent.

According to prosecutors, Won confessed that she was a trained North Korean spy.

Originally, the suspect fled the North after stealing tons of zinc, which is a capital crime there. Won returned to the North in 1998 after hiding in northeastern China for years and later became a spy for North Korea’s National Security Agency, they said.

Her mission ― based in China ― was to kidnap defectors there for repatriation.

She later pretended to be an ethnic Korean Chinese woman and married a South Korean factory worker before coming to the South in 2001.

After her arrival, she reported herself as a North Korean defector and worked as a lecturer on anti-communism at military camps nationwide.

According to investigators, she maintained romantic relations with three to four officers and even shared an apartment with an Army First Lieutenant Hwang. The 27-year-old Hwang reportedly suspected that his partner was a spy, but ignored the fact and handed her classified military information.