A trade department head from the North Hamkyung Provincial People’s Committee has been removed from his post for the crime of "causing state losses," and the same department’s chief of staff sent to a political prison camp for espionage, Daily NK has learned.
 “A number of provincial trade department officials from the People’s Committee in North Hamkyung Province have been either been fired or arrested,” a local source told Daily NK on Tuesday. “Earlier this year, a 45-year-old chief of staff visited China on business but was arrested by the State Security Department for purportedly establishing contact with the (South Korean) National Intelligence Service [NIS].”
Among both Party cadres and the general public, an "NIS” case is considered a grave crime, all but guaranteeing the accused will “rot in a political prison camp,” according to the source, who added that “a lot of people are shaking their heads saying they feel bad for the poor guy who has been sent away for a business trip that went wrong.”
If one comes into contact with NIS agents, even briefly by factors entirely out his or her control, the probability of getting arrested on “NIS” charges runs high, according to the source, who cited a specific case from some years ago.
“In the first few years of the 2000s, there was a case that got that female trade head and a number of other officials arrested,” she explained. “At the time, they were falsely charged with having come in contact with an NIS agent while they were meeting traders from China, and subsequently sent to a political prison camp in Chongjin." Tragically, released on bail 10 years later after her name was cleared, the female trade head died soon thereafter from health complications developed from time spent languishing in the abject conditions of a political prison camp.

 [Source: Daily NK]