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 Late on Thursday, the North's official KCNA news agency showed
images of two middle-aged men it identified as Kim Kuk Gi and Choe
Chun Gil speaking at a news conference in the North Korean capital,
Pyongyang.
It said the two men were South Korean nationals working as spies for
Seoul's National Intelligence Service from the Chinese border city
of Dandong.
"They zealously took part in the anti-DPRK smear campaign of the
U.S. imperialists and the puppet group of traitors to isolate and
blockade the DPRK in (the) international arena," the agency said,
using North Korea's official DPRK acronym for Democratic People's
Republic of Korea.
South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles ties with the
North, confirmed the two men are citizens of the South but declined
to comment on their backgrounds.
 A ministry official told a media briefing on Friday their detention
was "deeply regrettable" and demanded their immediate return to
South Korea.
"Everything is groundless," an official with South Korea's National
Intelligence Service told Reuters.
North Korean state media accused one of the men of running a
China-based "underground church" and illegally spreading foreign
information on USB sticks and SD memory cards in the country.
Dandong is home to many ethnic Korean Chinese traders who deal with
both North and South Korean businessmen. It is also home to South
Korean and Christian missionaries from the West trying to operate in
North Korea.
The KCNA article did not say how or where the two men had been
arrested.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she was aware
of the reports of the arrests, but lacked details and would have to
look into the matter.
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North Korea has held South Korean missionary Kim Jeong-wook since
October 2013 on allegations of espionage, despite pleas from Seoul
to release him. He was given a life sentence of hard labor.
In February, a South Korean-born Canadian pastor went missing during
a humanitarian mission in the North and his church said earlier this
month he was being detained there.
Last year, a Canadian Christian couple who worked with North Korean
refugees and ran a coffee shop in Dandong were accused of espionage
by the Chinese government.
Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae was released last year after
being sentenced by the North Korean government on charges of trying
to bring down the state.
(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Tony
Munroe, Paul Tait and Simon Cameron-Moore)
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