South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) apparently handed over information on nine-thousand North Korean defectors to the U.S. government. 

Wikileaks recently posted on its Web site a cable sent by the U.S. Embassy in Seoul to the State Department on July 9th, 2007. It shows the U.S. government has an extensive amount of classified information on North Korea. Among the files is the information of nine-thousand-180 North Korean defectors living in South Korea.   

The information was apparently collected by the NIS and related agencies and regularly provided to the Korea office of the U.S.' Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 1997 to 2007.  

The testimonies of North Korean defectors among the information collected are thought to be closely connected to the U.S.' assessment of the North Korean regime's stability, planning against a regime collapse or a crisis, and establishing a database for the regime's human rights infringement records. 

The NIS said it cannot confirm what was the content of the embassy cables.