Among the internal spies captured since the founding of the People's Republic of China, how high can the highest level be?
In 1991, at the age of 35, Li Bin was promoted to director of the Asian Department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, a rising star in China's diplomatic circles.
However, it is such a national elite who seems to have a bright future, but at the peak of his life, he was imprisoned after his years-long espionage activities were exposed.
What did he do, and what happened to him?
Once the pride of the sky
Li Bin was born in Beijing in 1956 to a family of intellectuals, and is a native Chinese in all respects, but his parents were actually ethnic Koreans who had taken refuge in Beijing from Yanbian after the 918 Incident.
Influenced by his family, Li Bin was born to master both Chinese and North Korean languages, and he was smart and studious, cheerful, not only had excellent grades, but also had a very good popularity among his classmates and neighbors, and showed his talent for interpersonal communication early.
In 1972, at the age of 16, Li Bin was sent to study at Kim Il Sung University in North Korea, which was extremely rare at that time, and was sent to study at Kim Il Sung University.
In North Korea, Li Bin still used his interpersonal skills to lay a good foundation for his future work, and surprisingly, he also got acquainted with Kim Jong-il, the supreme leader of North Korea at the time.
It is said that the acquaintance of the two was an accident. In 1964, Kim Jong Il had already graduated from Kim Il Sung University, and Li Bin was separated by 12 years, so he could only be said to be an alumnus, not a classmate.
In 1973, in his capacity as secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, Kim Jong Il returned to the university to inspect the university and gave a lecture in the nature of an open class.
In his speech, he asked many questions, but few people dared to answer, but Ri Bin raised his hand in response, and his words were fluent and his views were sharp, which left a deep impression on Kim Chong-il.
After the speech, Kim Chong-il sent someone to invite Li Bin for an interview, and after learning that the person in front of him was not yet an adult, he was even more impressed by him, although the two were very different in age and status, but since then they have become old friends, and even according to Li Bin himself, he once provided informal consulting services for Kim Chong-il in his private capacity.
In 1976, Li Bin returned to China after graduation, and the organization attached great importance to his accumulated contacts in North Korea and his personal relationship with Kim Chong-il, and soon recruited him as a party member, and arranged to enter the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to work at the Chinese Embassy in North Korea.
In addition to the aforementioned Director of the Department of Asian Affairs and Ambassador to South Korea, in 2006, he also served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Municipal Party Committee and Deputy Mayor of Weihai City, Shandong Province.
Anyone with a little political knowledge can see that the reason why the state arranged for him to concurrently serve as mayor is to cultivate his administrative ability and prepare him to move from foreign affairs to domestic affairs, which is a sign that he will enter the decision-making level in the future.
He was only 50 years old at the time, and if nothing else, he would probably have entered the Central Committee four or five years later and set another "record for the youngest person" to become a full-fledged leader of a central ministry, but none of this happened.
In 2006, Li Bin's life as a "pillar of the country" came to an abrupt end, and a letter from South Korea exposed his disguise.
Because of the importance of the matter, the central investigation team did not disclose all the details at that time, and only announced the shuanggui in October of that year, and it was not until many years later that we vaguely learned that Li Bin had already been plotted by South Korea to become a spy.
What did South Korea do to corrupt such a senior diplomat?
Give up faith for money
In 2014, Jin Yinan, a professor at the National Defense University, disclosed some details of the espionage case that had not been made public, including clues about the Li Bin case.
South Korea attached great importance to Ri Bin at the time, as he was not only a Chinese diplomat, but also maintained a long-standing friendship with North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong-il.
As long as he plots against him, he can obtain the high-level secrets of China and North Korea at the same time, so long before he became ambassador to South Korea, around 1994 when he was still serving as counselor, he launched a long plan of rebellion against him.
From the perspective of normal people, people like Li Bin do not look like they can be lured. He is meticulous at work, his private life is rigorous and orderly, he is not good at collecting money, he has been an official for many years, and his only private car is a retired old Hongqi official car purchased by the unit at a discount.
But in real spy warfare, infiltration and rebellion will not be as simple as shown in film and television works.
As we all know, it is normal for diplomats to bring their families to attend diplomatic gatherings in order to express cordiality and friendship, and it is also very normal for the families of diplomats to develop personal friendship without contact with official business.
It is precisely in this way that South Korea's intelligence agencies start with this, allowing intelligence officers to play the role of family members of South Korean diplomats, privately contact Li Bin's wife, and with great patience, spy on her preferences little by little.
At that time, Korean idol culture was all the rage, and Korean dramas were quite popular when they first entered China, and Li Bin's wife was no exception.
After finding out the situation, the Korean side ordered the intelligence officers who came into contact with her to arrange many parties for her to meet with Korean idol actors, and kept sending gifts.
At first, it was just a simple souvenir, and then it became more and more valuable, constantly tearing her bottom line and consumption view, and finally completely let her fall into the abyss of luxury and corruption.
After taking down Li Bin's wife, the South Korean intelligence department easily mastered Li Bin's various living habits and private information, and then began to corrupt Li Bin by the same means.
The difficulty from one to one hundred is much lower than from zero to one, and it is much more convenient to master Li Bin's pillow person, and then want to influence him, not to mention that Li Bin has an Achilles heel, which Professor Jin Yinan described more vaguely in the open class as "his orientation, alas, can't say".
It is conceivable that in order to have a normal work, life, and interpersonal relationships, Li Bin suppressed his own nature, got married, had children, and lived a normal life in the eyes of others, but the consequence of this is that once the suppressed nature is released, it is difficult to control it again.
We do not know the details, but what is certain is that when he became ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to South Korea in 2001, he was completely degenerated and reduced to a spy for South Korea.
So, in the five years since he became a spy, what has he done to make people spurn to this day?
The wounds of the betrayer
In 1997, Li Bin joined the working group of the China-South Korea maritime delimitation negotiations, which is a major project related to China's territorial sea sovereignty, but he has been instigated to do not do his best for the country, but secretly began to provide South Korea with top-secret materials related to the negotiations.
At the heart of the dispute between China and South Korea is Suyan Reef, a small submarine reef 132 nautical miles from the Zhoushan Islands, almost in the middle of a straight line between China and South Korea, and modern international law stipulates that a country's exclusive economic zone is within 200 nautical miles of its coastal territory.
As long as the sovereignty of Suyan Reef is clarified, not only will the entire Yellow Sea and half of the East China Sea be within the radiation of China's exclusive economic zone, but it will even force Japan's power out of the East China Sea.
Although the ROK has repeatedly tried to illegally occupy the reef, the mainland, in line with the principle of peace, has always tried to make the ROK retreat in a peaceful way, but the ROK side has always had ill intentions.
At that time, Asia was experiencing an economic crisis, and South Korea's vitality was greatly damaged, even if the United States was behind it, it did not have the confidence to really start a military confrontation with China, and for South Korea, if it did not find out the attitude of China and North Korea on military issues, it would be very passive in negotiations.
Mr. Lee, as South Korea had hoped, provided them with confidential information on both China and North Korea, giving South Korea the upper hand in the next two rounds of negotiations.
In 2001, Li Bin officially became ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to South Korea, and occupied a considerable voice in the negotiations, but under his influence, a "China-South Korea Fisheries Agreement" was signed and adopted, which was not optimistic for China.
Originally, the agreement only divided the fishing zone between the Yellow Sea and the northern part of the East China Sea, and had nothing to do with the delimitation of the maritime boundary, but the South Korean side took advantage of this to make a big fuss, falsely claiming that China had retreated on the territorial dispute, and then spent 21.2 billion yuan to build a helipad on Suyan Reef, trying to create a "fait accompli" to take away the ownership of Suyan Reef.
Li Bin's actions have seriously undermined China's national sovereignty and are one of the reasons why the dispute between China and South Korea over the Suzhou Rock Reef has not been resolved to this day.
Moreover, in recent years, due to the openness of Sino-US contradictions, South Korea, at the behest of the United States, has begun to send troops to provoke at Suyan Reef, and the harm of this can be seen.
In addition, Li Bin subsequently betrayed a lot of information to the South Korean side and maintained continuous contact for at least five years.
It is reported that in the course of the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue in 2003, it was he who continued to sell intelligence, which made China and the DPRK extremely passive in the negotiations.
In order to cover up the fact that he had obtained a large amount of money in a short period of time, he informed the South Korean side to purchase real estate in South Korea for him, and through his relatives, he received part of the monetary returns given to him by South Korea in the name of business.
He covered everything well until 2006.
For the sake of insurance, South Korea did not choose any direct communication method, but let them plant the staff of the embassy to carry the message to them, this method is primitive but effective, and the information transmitted by a single line can ensure that the secret is not leaked to the greatest extent.
But that year, Li Bin returned to China to report on his work and accepted the arrangement to concurrently serve as the deputy mayor of Weihai City, and stayed in the country for a long time.
Due to the high level, the investigation department could not believe it for a while after receiving the report and obtaining the evidence of the letter, so in order not to be alarmed, they launched a secret investigation for several months, and finally determined that Li Bin was indeed a South Korean spy who sold intelligence outside the country, and arrested him in December of that year.
The rebellion of the diplomatic ambassador is an extremely rare scandal in the world, and it is impossible to deal with it publicly, so the state finally sentenced Li Bin to seven years in prison for economic crimes, which may sound short, and theoretically ended his sentence in 2014.
However, this traitor who has been reviled by thousands of people, no one has seen him since he was released from prison, and some media have tried to find him, but there has never been any news of him.