A court in military ruled Myanmar has sentenced two officials to death for leaking information, sources said Friday, in a case reportedly involving secret ties between the ruling junta and North Korea.

The men, along with a third who was jailed for 15 years, were arrested last year after details and photos about a trip to nuclear-armed North Korea by the Myanmar regime's third-in-command were leaked to exiled media, reports said.
 

"Two officials got the death sentence and another one was jailed for 15 years for leaking information. They were sentenced at the special court in Insein Prison on Thursday," an official source said on condition of anonymity.
 

The two condemned men were retired army major Win Naing Kyaw and foreign ministry official Thura Kyaw, while the man given a 15 year sentence was Pyan Sein, also a foreign ministry employee, the official sources said.
 

Myanmar has the death penalty but sentences are almost always commuted to life imprisonment.
 

Thursday's sentences were passed under the state emergency act for leaking military secrets, the website of Thailand based magazine Irrawaddy said, citing sources at the notorious jail in Yangon where hundreds of dissidents are kept.

It said Win Naing Kyaw also received a 20 year sentence for violation of the Electronic Act and holding illegal foreign currency. The act prohibits sending information, photos or video damaging to the regime abroad via the Internet.

North Korea involvement
The trip to North Korea by junta number three General Shwe Mann, who is also the joint chief of staff of Myanmar's armed forces, involved procuring arms and discussing tunnel building and other matters, Irrawaddy reported.
 

In June a group of exiled Myanmar activists released leaked pictures of what they said was a secret network of tunnels built by North Korean experts inside Myanmar, raising alarm over the country's links with nuclear armed Pyongyang.
 

The Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) based in Oslo, Norway, said most of the vehicle-width tunnels were constructed around the junta's new capital, Naypyidaw.
 

Details of the tunnels and of Shwe Mann's trip prompted the United States to express concern about Myanmar's relations with North Korea, even as Washington pursued a new policy of engagement with the military regime.
 

During a visit to Thailand in July, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the communist state could be sharing atomic technology with military ruled Myanmar, posing a major threat to the region.

Cooperation
At the same time a US warship, acting on the basis of sanctions introduced when Pyongyang restarted its nuclear programme, tracked a suspect North Korean ship reportedly heading for Myanmar.
 

Dozens of other officials in the defence and foreign ministries were arrested after the leaks but the status of their cases is not known, Irrawaddy said.
 

The death sentences imposed Thursday were part of a wave of harsh punishments handed down by Myanmar's courts as the regime cracks down on dissent ahead of elections promised by the generals some time in 2010.
 

A video journalist who had worked with the DVB was last week jailed for 20 years for violating the electronics act, rights groups said Wednesday, although they did not mention any link with the Myanmar-North Korea case.
 

Myanmar severed ties with Pyongyang in 1983 following a failed assassination attempt by North Korean agents on then South Korean president Chun Doo-Hwan as he visited the Southeast Asian nation.
 

The bombing killed 17 of Chun's entourage including cabinet ministers, while four Myanmar officials also died, but with both countries branded "outposts of tyranny" by the United States they later sought to rebuild relations.
 

Source: AFP