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Has N Korean missile expert defected to US?

SEOUL: South Korea is checking a newspaper report that a missile expert from North Korea has defected to the United States, the government said on Saturday.

Im Ki Song, 59, and a son and a nephew defected to the United States via China last month, South Korea's most prestigious newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, reported on Friday. It cited unidentified sources in Beijing.

"We are still checking. Right now, we don't have anything to say about the report," said a spokesman for Seoul's National Intelligence Service. He spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

Communist North Korea rattled nerves in Asia and Washington in 1998 by firing a three-stage rocket that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific.

The Pentagon seeks to develop a network of radars and missile interceptors that could defend the United States against a possible missile launch from North Korea.

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said, last month that in the next five to 10 years, North Korean missiles will be advanced enough to reached all Nato countries.

North Korea agreed last September to forgo missile tests for the duration of talks with Washington aimed at improving ties.

But it recently threatened to lift its missile test moratorium, complaining about the US missile defence programme.

More than 400 North Koreans have defected to South Korea in the past several years, about 150 of them in 1999.