The Washington Times
S. Korean dissident returns
to spy charges
UPI Correspondent
INCHEON, South Korea, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Was he a spy for North Korea or a victim of ideological confrontations on the peninsula that remains the world's last Cold War flashpoint?
A homecoming by a dissident scholar after 37 years in exile has renewed a question about his identity and some people in Seoul have raised concerns that official permission for the controversial visit may touch off a new ideological row.
When Song Du-yul, a German-based professor-in-exile, arrive in Seoul Monday, he was greeted by hundreds of dissidents and progressive activists, who praise his pro-democracy activities and role in promoting inter-Korean reconciliation. They waved a large placard, saying: "We welcome Prof. Song Du-yul with hopes of peace and unification (of the Korean peninsula)."
Near them, a group of anti-communist activists staged a protest against the visit and called for Song's arrest and imprisonment for his alleged pro-North Korea activities.
"Song Du-yul, take off the mask and disclose your real identity," protesters' placards said. They called him a devoted communist who had spied for North Korea since the late 1960s.
Upon arriving at Incheon International Airport, Song said his heart was bursting with happiness.
"My heart is full of deep emotion, as I set my foot here 37 years after leaving my country," he said. "I would like to experience and feel every aspect of the South Korean society during my stay."
The homecoming came after South Korea's newly inaugurated left-of-center government lifted a 37-year-long entry ban for Song, dismissing the conservative opposition's criticism. The 59-year-old scholar has been barred from returning home since 1967, when Seoul's military junta accused him for spying for communist North Korea.
South Korea's spy agency has said Song was suspected of violating its strict law on national security that bans unauthorized contacts with the communist North. During his stay in Germany, Song was accused of arranging for several South Koreans there to defect to North Korea, the intelligence agency says.
The spy agency categorized the scholar as "pro-North Korean" since Song traveled to Pyongyang in 1991 at the invitation of North Korean communist ideologues. Under Seoul's National Security Law, any South Korean could be sentenced to prison if convicted of praising an "anti-state organization," a reference to North Korea.
Controversy over his identity erupted again in 1998 when a prominent North Korean defector argued that Song had a dual personality as a Germany-based professor and as a senior official at the North Korea's Communist Party.
Hwang Jang-yop, who served as secretary of the North's ruling Workers' Party in charge of foreign policy before his defection to Seoul in 1997, said Song was actually the Party's Politburo member using an alias, Kim Chol Su, who ranked 23rd in the North Korean power ladder. Kim is a mystery for South Korean intelligence officials and North Korea watchers.
The National Intelligence Service defended Hwang's allegation about Song's dual personality. In 2001, then Unification Minister Lim Dong-won, a former intelligence chief, also told lawmakers he believed Song and Kim were the same person.
Months later, however, a South Korean court, after a three-year review of a defamation suit that Song filed, ruled the dual personality allegation was "unfounded."
Song says he was a scapegoat of South Korea's anti-communist campaigns during the Cold War. He insists Seoul's intelligence agents branded him a North Korean spy as part of efforts to crack down his democratic movement in Germany.
Song led the struggle in Germany against Gen. Park Chung-hee's dictatorship in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s. Park's two-decade-long military government was accused of using the anti-communist security law to crack down on movements against it.
Song resisted Seoul's recent offers to come home on the condition he undergo interrogation over his connections to Pyongyang and make a written pledge to honor the South Korea national security law. He called himself a "border rider" because he has rejected ideological dichotomy and sought to stay at the ideological border. Song said he wants to become the "productive third," refraining from being a devoted communist or capitalist.
"People usually think of 'elimination' with the word 'border rider,' but being at the border means also makes one most eligible to integrate," Song told South Korean journalists Monday. "My 37 years out of homeland was not that short. But being outside and inside is always relative."
Kim Se-kyun, a Seoul National University professor, described the dissident's homecoming as "a sign of shedding vestiges of the Cold War era" on the Korean peninsula.
"Song's visit will pave the way for further dismantling the Cold War's sad legacy on the peninsula and developing South Korea's democracy," he told reporters after greeting Song at the airport.
But the conservative opposition and anti-communist activists say Song is obliged to clear long-standing suspicions about his alleged dual personality and "enemy-benefiting" activities. The National Intelligence Service said Song would be interrogated Tuesday.
"The intelligence agency must thoroughly investigate the suspicions on and put him in jail if it finds any pro-North activities," opposition lawmaker Chung Hyung-keum, a former senior intelligence official, told a news conference.