South Korean President Park Geun-hye yesterday said that an anti-North Korea law was needed because the two nations remained technically at war, after a Korean-American was deported to the US under the law for making positive comments about North Korea.
However, Park also said that she remained open to a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to ease tensions.
Shin Eun-mi, a South Korea-born US citizen who came to South Korea last year as a tourist, has spoken positively of life in North Korea in speeches around the nation, as well as in online posts. She also blamed South Korea’s news media for encouraging alienation between the people of the two sides.
Photo: EPA
“Not all countries face exactly the same circumstances,” Park said at a news conference, when asked about South Korea’s National Security Law, the anti-North statute which Shin is accused of violating. “We need the very minimum of law to ensure security in this country, as we remain in a standoff with the North, and the law is enforced according to that.”
Earlier yesterday, a South Korean Ministry of Justice official confirmed that Shin had been deported for violating the National Security Law, as well as an immigration control law.
“She was taken to the [airport] and was expelled, and is barred from re-entry for the next five years,” the ministry official said, asking not to be named.
The National Security Law, enacted after the two Koreas were split at the end of World War II, but before the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, prohibits South Koreans from publicly praising the North Korean regime.
The latter war was ended in a truce and not with a peace treaty.
The law is considered obsolete mostly by liberal critics, who say it is used by conservative Seoul governments to stifle political opposition and suppress freedom of speech.
Shin boarded a plane on Saturday. Yonhap news agency said that she landed in Los Angeles on Saturday local time, adding that a scuffle broke out at her destination between supporters welcoming her back and opponents.
Appearing before reporters on Saturday after questioning by immigration authorities, Shin said that she was being deported, “but my love for my homeland cannot be expelled.”
“I will be wishing peace and unification for my homeland from afar with the love I have for my compatriots,” she said.
Also yesterday, Park said she had yet to see The Interview — a Hollywood comedy about a CIA plot to assassinate Kim.
The Seth Rogen film — blamed for triggering a hacking attack on Sony Pictures that US authorities have linked to North Korea — is not be released in South Korean cinemas, but is available online.
“I have not seen it yet, but I have learned the gist of the story from the media,” Park told a New Year’s news conference.
The US insists that North Korea, which had fiercely condemned the movie before its release, was behind a devastating suspected cyberattack on the studio behind the film, Sony Pictures, and slapped additional sanctions on Pyongyang in response.
Park described the US countermeasure as “very appropriate,” adding that North Korea had only itself to blame.
“North Korea provided the reason for the United States to take that action,” she said.
The Interview has become Sony’s best-grossing online film ever, making more than US$31 million on the Internet and other small-screen formats.
According to the Seoul-based, defector-run Web site Daily NK, North Korea has tightened surveillance on smugglers to ensure that no DVD or flash-drive copies of the film make it inside the nation.
“No one knows what will happen if you are caught watching a movie about the assassination of [Kim], but you may be executed as an example,” the Web site cited one source inside North Korea as saying.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in