Judgment on 31

Agents of South Korea's CIA fanned out through the world last summer to round up some 30 South Korean intellectuals--professors, painters, poets and composers--who were living and working abroad. The charges against them: spying for North Korea in a network controlled from East Germany.

The South Korean CIA persuaded the suspects to return home by threats against their relatives or offers of lighter sentences, but the news that they had been taken back to Korea touched off a furor in Western Europe, where most of them lived. France and West Germany, neither of which has extradition treaties with South Korea, lodged official protests with Seoul.

Early in November, 34 defendants went on trial in Seoul: eleven who had been living in West Germany, three from France, and one each from the J.S. and Austria, among other places. Nine were women. The government prosecutors charged that the defendants had made a total of 19 visits to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and 142 trips to East Berlin to undergo espionage training and receive instructions from North Korean secret agents. They were also accused of receiving more than $77,000 in operational funds from the Communists from 1958 to 1967. In evidence, the government showed off transmitters and decoding books.

Gathering Notes. Most of the defendants pleaded guilty to visiting the Communist capitals and receiving money, but insisted that they had not spied on their return home. Many, like Artist Eung Ro Lee, said that they had cooperated only to get news of relatives in North Korea. Said Lee: "I just wanted to see one of my sons supposedly residing in North Korea." "I visited Pyongyang," said Composer Yi Sang Yun, "merely to gather material for my music composition."

Last week a three-judge tribunal of the Seoul District Criminal Court delivered its verdicts. It found 31 of the 34 defendants guilty. Two were sentenced to death: Kyu Myung Chung, 39, a Frankfurt University physicist, and Yong Su Cho, 34, a professor of French, both of whom supplied Pyongyang with military and political information about South Korea. Four others were condemned to life imprisonment, including Composer Yun, and the rest given prison terms from one to 15 years, which they may appeal.

The West German government, which sent Bonn University Law Professor Gerhard Griinwald to observe the trial, is still angry over the "gross violation" of its sovereignty in the original arrests. On hearing the verdict, the Bundestag discussed the issue for two hours. Bonn made plain that it was still considering retaliatory action, ranging from a cutoff in the $25 million in aid that it plans to give South Korea next year to a break in diplomatic relations.

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