BEIJING (AP) -– A scholarly expert on China's role in the Korean War jailed for more than a decade for spying has been given a further reduction in sentence and will be released in June, a human rights group said.

The Intermediate Court in the southern city of Guangzhou has given scholar Xu Zerong a third sentence reduction, slicing five more months from his 13-year-prison term, the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation said Thursday.
Xu's detention in 2000 came as Chinese security forces began turning their attention to what they considered to be spying networks involving Chinese academics with foreign ties.
Xu, a Hong Kong native who also goes by the name David Tsui, had copied books and documents on the Korean War he thought were declassified and had given them to a South Korean scholar, Dui Hua said. He was arrested for providing intelligence to foreigners, among other charges.
During the investigation, an office in the Guangzhou Military Region said that the materials Xu copied were still classified as secrets, Dui.