Two weeks ago, Song Du-yul triumphantly returned from 37 years of exile in Germany. Song, a 59-year-old professor of philosophy, was greeted with bouquets at the airport and an invitation to a reception at the Blue House, South Korea's presidential office.
The Korea Broadcasting System, the state television network, created a documentary, Return of the Exiles, featuring Song and 33 other returning South Koreans.
The cause of the adulation was his long struggle for democracy against the military dictatorships that ruled in the 1970s and 1980s. A respected academic, he spoke out in Europe and the US in opposition to military rule, which ended in South Korea in 1987.
But the warm reception turned to chilly reassessment last week, after a private TV station broadcast photographs of Song posing with the former North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung in 1991. Then the station showed a film clip of Song weeping at Kim's 1994 funeral, and grasping the hands of Kim's son and successor, Kim Jong-il.
South Korean government investigators said Song had visited Pyongyang 18 times and written a dozen letters of loyalty to Kim Jong-il.
Song admitted under questioning by prosecutors last week that he had joined the North Korean Workers' Party in 1973, became a Politburo member under a pseudonym and took up to US$100,000 from the North Koreans, apparently to recruit South Korean college students in Europe to the North's brand of Stalinism.
But to reporters, he argued that joining the party and writing the letters were just "procedural" steps taken by an academic wishing to research in North Korea. He said the money was to pay travel expenses for his research trips.
Conservatives in South Korea rapidly seized on the news to embarrass the government. One legislator called it "the biggest espionage case in decades."
Some conservatives noted that a week before Song left Berlin, Park Jong-sam, a deputy director of the South Korean National Intelligence Service and a political appointee -- and a college classmate and friend of Song -- visited the city.
A spokesman for the Intelligence Service said it was a "coincidence," but the conservatives say the visit is proof that the government is soft on North Korea.
South Koreans in general tend to doubt that a longtime exile would have had any access to the kind of state secrets Pyongyang would desire. But many are uneasy that so many government agencies would promote the return of a man whose lhistory of pro-North work had spawned a large intelligence file.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese