A South Korean politician accused of praising North Korea at talk shows she hosted last year denied charges against her during her first court hearing on the case Monday.

Hwang Sun, a former deputy spokeswoman of the now-defunct Democratic Labor Party, was detained last month on charges of making flattering remarks about North Korea during an on-stage talk concert she hosted in November and on a YouTube channel.

The allegations, if proven true, would be in violation of the South's National Security Law, which bans any activity meant to praise or propagandize North Korean ideals. Seoul remains technically at war with Pyongyang since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

"I examined some 1,600 instances of material evidence submitted by the prosecution and found that most of it is irrelevant to the case and much was not what I owned or made," the 40-year-old said during the hearing at the Seoul Central District Court.

"The talk show has no enemy-benefiting elements or a purpose to benefit the enemy," her lawyer said.

Prosecutors earlier submitted as evidence CDs containing transcripts and videos of the "Unification Talk Concert," evidence showing her attending other "enemy-benefiting" events, court rulings on relevant cases, blog postings and emails praising the North Korean regime.

Her Korean-American co-host Shin Eun-mi was deported in January over similar allegations. She is now banned from entering South Korea for the next five years. (Yonhap)