Ruling party lawmaker Ahn Min-seok doesnt want people to sing #SouthKorean National Anthem, saying it was composed by someone in the "pro-Japan roster dictionary" made by Minjok Institute, which focuses on anti-Japan accusations.https://t.co/EAfC12Q60S
— Tara O (@DrTaraO) August 8, 2019
Kim Sung-tae, floor leader of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, is attacked in the face in front of the National Assembly in Seoul on May 5, 2018, in this photo captured from cable channel MBN. The attacker hit Kim in the chin as he was walking up the stairs and later told the police he was angry at the opposition party for causing a parliamentary stalemate. Kim has been on a hunger strike from May 3, demanding an independent counsel probe into an online opinion rigging scandal implicating a ruling party legislator. (Yonhap)
Just the fact that Pyongyang is allowing them to do this shows that they are useful idiots for the Kim regime:
Female activists from around the world will march from Pyongyang to Seoul in May to express their wish for inter-Korean peace, a global non-profit said Sunday.
The Peace Development Fund said around 30 female activists will be participating in the march, which will see them cross the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) bisecting the Korean Peninsula, on May 24.
The activists include American feminist Gloria Steinem, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire and Chung Hyun-kyung, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, the organization said.
“Our wish is to cross the DMZ, which separates tens of millions of Korean families, on foot to express our hope for peace,” the group said in a statement.
Participants will also hold peace seminars in the two Korean capitals and discuss the role of women in reducing inter-Korean tension.
The two Koreas are technically at war since the Korean War in the 1950s ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. [Yonhap]
I wonder what these activists leftists will do anything to criticize North Korean human rights or even the conscription of women for 5 years in the North Korean military?
The Korean authorities should have stopped these people at the gate of the airport and sent them home because it is illegal for foreigners to conduct political activity while visiting South Korea:
The Rev. Bill Bichsel, an 86-year-old Tacoma priest known for his acts of civil disobedience, has returned from a trip to South Korea to protest construction of a naval base there.
Just three months ago, Bichsel was seriously ill and in the hospital in Tacoma. But his health —while still frail due to a heart condition—improved to the point he was able to make the trip using a wheelchair.
He said his doctors didn’t try to stop him from traveling.
“They just shake their heads,” Bichsel said. “They know I’m going so they don’t make a big fuss.”
For nearly 40 years, the Jesuit priest known as “Bix” has protested against U.S. military programs and weapons. He’s been arrested dozens of times for trespassing during protests and jailed more than a half-dozen times.
He wasn’t arrested in South Korea, but he realized the 12-day trip could set his health back.
“I know I could go anytime,” Bichsel said.
He was weak upon returning Nov. 20, but has gotten stronger since then. And he was inspired by the trip.
Bichsel and nine other people —nearly all from the Puget Sound area—traveled to Jeju Island to commits acts of civil resistance against construction of a base by the South Korean Navy. The base has been under construction on the island off the southern tip of Korea for eight years. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but what gets me about the whole Cheju Naval Base issue is that the leftists complain about the base provoking China when the Chinese is busy making claims against Korean territory and the territory of other countries in the region and have constructed an aircraft carrier to help enforce those claims. If the Chinese were not making aggressive territorial claims this base would have never been built in the first place and the leftists have the nerve to condemn the ROK government for provoking China?
Here is an interesting article about an ex-State Senator trying to get memorials that represent Korea’s modern history built in Oregon:
As a young boy during the Korean War, John Lim witnessed his father being forcibly conscripted by the North Korean People’s Army.
The incident was only the beginning of a series of greater tragedies. Branded as a communist, his father, who was a fire captain in his hometown of Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, was shot dead by South Korean authorities after the three-year conflict. The entire family was destroyed, and Lim himself nearly died from tuberculosis.
His brushes with death, however, did not kill his dreams. In 1966, a penniless Lim took a flight to the U.S. and pursued religious studies while working as a janitor, painter and gardener. He then ventured into business, boasting acumen in retail, health food and real estate, among other areas.
In 1992, Lim set a milestone in Korean-American history, becoming a state senator in Oregon. After serving five straight terms, he is now seeking to “set up memorials dedicated to U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur and former South Korean presidents who contributed to the country’s economic and political development, such as Park Chung-hee and Kim Dae-jung. [Korea Herald]
Here is something else I found of interest in the article, Lim’s group tried to take over the MacArthur statue in Incheon after hate groups wanted to tear it down:
The five-year project was initiated after some liberal civic groups called for the demolition of a MacArthur sculpture at a public park in Incheon last year.
The Lim-led Korean War Memorial Foundation of Oregon initially sought to take over the statue, but then decided to have a new one made. In 2000, it established a 5-acre memorial park within a city park of Wilsonville near Portland to commemorate the war and U.S. veterans, with the support of the Seoul government, the city and South Korean businesses there.
Long time ROK Heads may remember how in 2005 huge riots broke out in Incheon as ROK veterans groups defended the MacArthur statue from the anti-US leftist hate groups that had vowed to tear it down.
Fortunately the anti-US hate groups failed to tear down the castle after the Braveheart style battle to defend the hill. For those that haven’t been there before Jayu Park in Incheon where the MacArthur statue stands is well worth checking out as well as taking a walk through Chinatown below the hill.
This is actually just another example that Korea is a rule by law, instead of a rule of law nation because these guys have been violating the National Security Laws for years:
Detectives from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the Security Investigative Team of the National Policy Agency (NPA) raided nineteen places, including the South Korea branch office of the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification (PKAR), on charges of violating the National Security Law on Thursday.
It was reported that the NIS arrested six persons including Lee Kyu-jae, 73 years old and chairman of PKAR’s South Korea branch, and searched their headquarters located in the Namyoung neighborhood of Seoul. It is the first time in six years, since Professor Song Du-yul’s case in 2003, the NIS has directly involved itself in the investigation of a security matter.
At 6:30 a.m. of the same day, detectives from the NIS and NPA raided twelve houses of PKAR senior members, six offices of PKAR, and the company that has managed PKAR’s email. The NIS says that they are analyzing hard discs, accounting records and publications that they secured during the raid.
The NIS also arrested three PKAR senior members, and three senior members of the South Korean branch of the All-Korean Committee for Implementation of the 6.15 Joint Declaration. The NIS says that it is investigating them both for whether they have communicated with North Korean without the South Korean government’s permission or praised North Korea in their publications. [Hankyoreh]
The Joong Ang Ilbo is reporting that the police believe the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification was taking orders from North Korea in violation of the National Security Law.
For those that don’t know, the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification is one of the many North Korean front groups active in South Korea. For example the former Vice Chairman of the PKAR, Kang Soon-jeong was arrested back in 2006 as a North Korean spy that instigate the MacArthur Statue protests in Incheon that ultimately led to a massive counter-demonstration by ROK Marine Corps veterans that turned the streets of Incheon into utter anarchy of fisticuffs.
The PKAR has been active in communist causes for years. In recent years they even teamed up with leftist communists groups in the US to protest the US-ROK FTA. PKAR members have also been regularly going back and forth to Pyongyang to receive their marching orders these past few years with no action taken by the prior Roh Moo-hyun administration.
A North Korean poster promoting the communist country’s Songun or military-first ideology the Seoul chapter of the Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union recently advised members to put up in classrooms.
The PKAR has also been active in promoting the North Korean Songun philosophy in Korean school classrooms and even decorates their webpage with North Korean propaganda posters. They have also been active in the anti-USFK movement as well.
I could go on and on but I think everyone gets the point that these people have been breaking the law for years, but has been able to get away with it due to the past governments not enforcing the law. This selective enforcement of the law is nothing new in Korea because while these North Korean apologists and spies was busy degrading the country, the Roh government was busy trying to silence the ROK veterans groups that regularly counter-protests these North Korean stooges.
By the PKAR has also been part of an effort to get the Obama administration to sign a peace treaty between the US and North Korea. This effort actually appears to be working considering Stephen Bosworth is now the US envoy to North Korea.
