An inflammable material explodes during a talk show hosted by Korean-American activist Shin Eun-mi and opposition politician Hwang Sun at a cathedral in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, on Dec. 10, 2014. A high school senior was detained for hurling the material accusing the two women of making pro-North Korean remarks. (Yonhap)
It will be interesting to see if the US State Department gets involved in this since this pro-North Korean stooge is a US citizen:
A Korean-American woman has been temporarily banned from leaving the country amid an investigation into her alleged pro-North Korean remarks during a series of talk shows, police said Thursday.
The move comes after local conservative civic groups filed a complaint against Shin Eun-mi, 53, and Hwang Sun, the former deputy spokeswoman of the now-defunct Democratic Labor Party, with the police.
During the talk shows where guests and the audience exchange views on a specific subject, the two women, as guests, allegedly made remarks sympathetic toward the communist regime and painted the North Korean regime in a positive light.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency probing the case said it banned Shin from leaving the country for 10 days as she had disobeyed an order to appear for questioning.
Shin, who has published a book on her trip to North Korea, had reportedly planned to leave South Korea on Friday.
Earlier in the day, police also raided Hwang’s home and the office of a talk show organizer as part of their investigation.
Hwang is known for having given birth to a baby girl during a sightseeing trip to North Korea in 2005.
Police have reportedly been investigating the duo on suspicion of violating South Korea’s draconian National Security Law that bans any “anti-state” activities that attempt to praise, encourage or propagandize North Korean political ideals. [Yonhap]
For those that don’t know the Democratic Labor Party was the political party in South Korea that was filled with a number of people who ended up being convicted for spying for North Korea.
Here is an article that provides the left’s view on the UPP spy scandal in South Korea:
As the debate over the NIS in the National Assembly intensified and militant mass demonstrations continued to call for reform, the National Intelligence Service struck back on August 28, raiding the homes and offices of 18 members of the Unified Progressive Party. Three party officials were arrested and charged with treason. As the principal target for vengeance, Lee Seok-ki would later be arrested after a vote in the National Assembly stripped him of immunity.
Wild claims were made, as the NIS charged that Lee headed a group called the “Revolutionary Organization,” which it said was planning an armed uprising in the event of war with North Korea. The quotations attributed to Lee were provocative, and were said to originate from a recording provided by an informer who attended two meetings of a local branch of the Unified Progressive Party on May 10 and 12.
In a familiar pattern, the NIS illegally leaked selected excerpts to the New Frontier Party and media outlets. The result was as intended, and a furious trial by media ensued, even though the courts had not yet ruled on the admissibility of the transcript as evidence. Lee claimed that he was innocent of all charges, and the NIS had fabricated the quotations it had attributed to him. He charged the NIS with engaging in “political persecution” against his party.
Lee Jung-hee, chairperson of the Unified Progressive Party, announced at a press conference, “The Blue House, facing an unprecedented crisis, and the National Intelligence Service, on the eve of its dissolution after being exposed of rigging the last election, are conducting a Yushin era witch hunt in the 21st century. This is an attempt to silence the candlelight protests as the truth of the fraudulent crimes of the National Intelligence Service are exposed, and voices demanding accountability from President Park Geun-hye intensify.” Lee warned, “Just as they accused all citizens who supported the opposition in the last election as ‘pro-North sympathizers’, they will try to crush and eliminate all democratic forces by labeling them criminal insurgents.”
There were those who questioned the timing of the raid. The NIS claimed that it had been investigating Lee Seok-ki for three years, and the meetings that provided its rationale took place three and a half months beforehand. Why was this moment chosen, they wondered? The NIS was on the ropes. The National Assembly had completed its investigation of the NIS, and the opposition parties were demanding that the NIS should be banned from domestic intelligence gathering. According to a source familiar with the functioning of the NIS, “This investigation looks suspiciously like an attempt by the NIS to justify its existence. It may be intended to block efforts to reduce and eliminate the agency’s domestic and investigative branches, which are at its heart.” [CounterPunch]
You can read much more at the link that provides the UPP’s side of the story that everything was taken out of context. I always suspected that the claims the NIS made of the spy ring plotting to overthrow the government were exaggerated in response to the Korean left’s attempts to reform the NIS. However, does the UPP deny that Lee was requesting classified documents and then leaking them in an effort to harm the US-ROK alliance? Why was Lee also trying to get his hands on US-ROK war plans? As I said before Lee and the UPP are just a political extension of the North Korean stooges in the Korean left that inhabit organization such as the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Korea Teacher’s Union. These organizations have long been pro-North Korean and anti-US. That is why I said this whole UPP spy scandal is just a continuation of the Ilshimhoe Spy Scandal and not some new organization trying to overthrow the government. These groups coordinate with North Korea in order to cause political and social unrest within South Korea. That is why I have also said that the UPP should not be banned in South Korea like some have suggested. By having the UPP all the pro-North Korean politicians are all in one party and you know who they are. What needs to be done is to ensure that state secrets are not given to them.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to the number of North Korean spies in South Korea, but at least they put four of them away in jail:
Four South Koreans were jailed for up to nine years Thursday for spying for North Korea and passing on the information to Pyongyang’s agents in Japan and China.
The Seoul Central District Court gave a fifth person a suspended jail term, a court spokeswoman told AFP.
The five were arrested last July on charges of violating the South’s security law.
The court passed a nine-year sentence on a 49-year-old man surnamed Kim, and jail terms ranging from five to seven years on the other three.
The five were convicted of collecting intelligence on South Korean political circles as well as on the activities of pro-North Korean groups in the South.
The prosecutors had demanded life imprisonment for Kim, citing his alleged long-term direct ties with North Korea and reluctance to repent. [Asia One]
You can read more about these convicted spies at these prior ROK Drop postings here and here. As usual these spies had ties to the South Korean academic and political left.
A North Korean spy ring has been uncovered in South Korea and it’s members are really not surprising:
Authorities are holding a U.S. citizen, Michael Chang (44), who they say was trained as a spy in North Korea between 1989 and 1993, became a member of the ruling Korean Workers Party, pledged allegiance to the party, and spied for the North for 10 years. The National Intelligence Service and prosecutors on Thursday also alleged that a former member of the minor opposition Democratic Labor Party’s central committee, Lee Jung-hun (42), and businessman Sohn Jung-mok (42) were persuaded by Chang to join him in spying for the North and until recently provided classified information to North Korean agents.
The Seoul Central District Court issued arrest warrants for the three former student activists on Thursday. The NIS is expanding its investigation and also arrested the vice DLP secretary general Choi Ki-young and another former student activist identified as Lee (42) the same day.
By using the DLP’s political organization and cover, the spy ring’s tentacles stretched throughout just about every anti-US movement in Korea including the Camp Humphreys protests:
The DPL vice secretary general has reportedly taken a leading role in pro-North Korean activities. He played a key part in organizing protests against the move of U.S. Forces Korea headquarters to Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province and was also involved in demonstrations condemning the government’s support for the UN resolution sanctioning North Korea in the wake of its nuclear test. Party sources said Choi showed more interest in issues like the abolition of the National Security Law and anti-American protests in Pyeongtaek than questions of public welfare. He also participated in candle light vigils over the killing of two middle school girls by a U.S. Army vehicle some years ago.
Lee Jung-hun also leaned toward a pro-North Korean ideology of national liberation when he was a member of the DLP’s central committee. National liberation, along with proletarian democracy, was one of the two major ideological strands among student activists in the 1980s. Since former student activists of the national liberation faction reportedly took a more active part in protests against free trade talks with the U.S. and the move of the USFK base, there is speculation linking the espionage scandal to the organized anti-American movement.
The spy ring has also been linked to the USFK environmental issue and even to trying to influence the election for the mayor of Seoul. Here is a report from One Free Korea:
A new report, not yet available in English, claims that North Korea used the Fifth Columnists of the “Il Shim Hue†to help the ruling leftist Uri Party in local elections last May. The report, based on leaks from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, claims that North Korea used Il Shim Hue (rough translation: The One-Minded Hundred) to direct the Democratic Labor Party throw its votes and support to the Uri Party to prevent the GNP candidate, Oh Se Hoon, from winning. Oh won, defeating Uri Justice Minister Kang Kum-Sil.
North Korea also directed Il Shim Hue to assemble detailed dossiers on South Korean politics: politicians, civic groups, issues, parties, you name it. One particular issue that concerned them was how South Koreans reacted to North Korea’s recent nuke test. The NIS claims that Il Shim Hue members canvassed popular sentiment about the test throughout South Korean society. Recent polls show a substantial minority (but thankfully, still a minority) blamed America for North Korea’s nuke test, something the ruling party eagerly latched onto.
Another huge shocker: North Korea had plans to infiltrate environmental groups to use them to inspire more anti-American sentiment. You may recall the recent South Korean film, The Host, a monster flick loosely based on a 2000 incident in which a civilian mortician on a U.S. Army post dumped a small amount of highly dilute formaldeyde into the Han River. The incident became a huge story in the South, and The Host inspired some icky and unhinged anti-American comments from one ruling party legislator, which neither the legislator nor his party have retracted, to my knowledge.
I and other K-bloggers have long chronicled the anti-US hate groups activities in Korea so really none of this is surprising to me. You can read more about my postings on the Camp Humphreys relocation issue here and the USFK pollution issue here.
The anti-US hate groups have been doing everything possible to stop the USFK relocation because the North Korean puppet masters did not want the US forces along the DMZ and in Seoul to be relocated further south on the peninsula and outside of North Korean artillery range. So they turned to their “activist” groups in the south to stop the relocation by playing towards Korean pride and trying to portray USFK as bullies because of the relocating of farmers to expand the base. The vast majority of the farmers took the compensation money and moved but the anti-US hate groups latched on to a handful of farmers as cover to launch their violent attacks on Camp Humphreys and have delayed the relocation. Here are the “activists” in action:
The pollution issue is the second front in stopping the USFK relocation. These “activists” claimed that the vacated Second Infantry Division bases were heavily polluted and were a danger to the civilian population if USFK did not pay to clean the bases up. The estimated costs to clean the bases by the “activists” was a completely unrealistic number they knew USFK would never pay. For those who have never served in Korea, the USFK camps are literally an oasis of green in the middle of dense urban cities. The camps after the Korean war were located on the outskirts of Korean cities but the camps have now been swallowed up by the growing cities which are a sign of Korea’s amazing development since the war. It is partly because of this development that USFK wants to relocate the camps to the sparsely populated Camp Humphreys area. If anything the USFK camps are the cleanest piece of land in the surrounding communities and some have been designated to become parks when handed over; yet the anti-US hate groups have successfully used this issue to further delay the USFK relocation.
However, none of this is anything new. Even before the USFK relocation issue surfaced the anti-US hate groups jumped on other anti-US issues in order to create a wedge between the US and the general South Korean population to great success. In fact this spy scandal has to be the worst kept secret in South Korea. The real scandal is why didn’t the ruling government do anything about it a long time ago? How high up the political ladder does this spy ring extend? The police do allegedly have a list of more possible spies that they intend to investigate:
However, the progressive party cannot but concern the aftermath, as its several leaders are scheduled to visit Pyongyang next Tuesday. DLP spokesman Park Yong-jin said the visit plan would not change, but some political watchers say they wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the visit would be cancelled.
Politicians of the 386 generation are also keeping a close eye on the case, as the prosecution secured a list of some 386 generation figure names at Chang’s house.
The 386 generation refers to those who were born in the 1960s and participated in pro-democracy struggles in the 1980s, and many of them are regarded as core members of the Roh administration.
Chang’s list had six figures names, including Choi. Four figures among the five arrested are also in the 386 generation, all except Chang. Because he is acquainted with many other members of the 386 generation, the case may develop into the largest spy scandal since 1997.
How far is the Korean government going to allow investigators to dig? This may just be the tip of the iceberg.
More from One Free Korea here.
For those who don’t know yet the Marmot has moved back to his old site and I have since updated my links, but anyway he has a post that links to an interview the Oranckay got to participate in with the lone survivor of the 1996 North Korean spy sub incident:
The guy had been the submarine’s navigator, and had lived on a North Korean naval base since the age of 14. Subsequently he knew very little beyond daily life on the base, and he was unfamiliar even with what the rest of North Korea is like. For example, he didn’t know what money was. He’d never needed any. When the South’s intelligence agency was done interrogating him and it came time to give the poor guy some orientation about South Korean society, one of the questions he asked at the end was how some bills could have more value than others when they’re all the same size. Shouldn’t the paper that you can buy more soju with be bigger?
When I met him we were also in the presence of a lady, yet he frequently reached down and scratched or held his privates. He had a lot of questions for me even though I was there to interpret. Is South Korea so expensive because there are so many foreigners here? Does each star on the American flag representone of the wars it has won? What happens if you don’t have the money to pay for the subway? Do South Korean women like men who wear ties better than those who don’t?
Read the rest on your own but it is an enlightening look into the wonders of Juche.
