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Family rallies to side of scholar
under fire
This
year's long Lunar New Year holidays, the biggest festival days of
Korea, were particularly cold and harsh for Chung Chung-hee and her
two sons, Song Dschun and Song Rinn. Ms. Chung, 61, who has
celebrated the lunar holiday in Germany for about 40 years, had
little to celebrate in Korea this year.
Ms. Chung is the wife of
Song Du-yul, 59, a Korean- German sociologist who fled to Germany in
1967 after speaking out publicly against the military regime of Park
Chung Hee. Mr. Song, a sociologist at the University of Muenster,
returned to South Korea last September for the first time since his
self-imposed exile.
But shortly after his homecoming, he was
detained by authorities here and charged with violations of Korea's
controversial National Security Law. He is now on trial - a verdict
could be handed down as early as tomorrow - on charges of being a
member of the North Korean Workers' Party since 1973 and a member of
the party's politburo since 1991.
He is also charged with having
received money, $20,000 to $30,000, to publicize the North's juche
philosophy of communist self-reliance, praising the North's
political system and propagandizing South Korean students in Germany
with that philosophy. Prosecutors say that he also led academic
seminars on Korean reunification that allegedly promoted the North's
ideology and persuaded a South Korean student in Germany to defect
to North Korea.
Mr. Song calls himself a "border rider" who
belongs neither to the North nor to the South and wants only better
communication and reconciliation between the two. But prosecutors,
the National Intelligence Service and some media have dubbed him the
"biggest North Korean spy ever," although the charges do not detail
any incidents of espionage.
Mr. Song's family, all German
citizens, say they do not understand the accusations against Mr.
Song. "My husband is just an innocent scholar. All he has done is
research on North Korea and work for the democratization of the
South," Ms. Chung said. "The holidays are painful because my husband
is in jail."
Mr. Song's wife and sons want Mr. Song released and
the National Security Law abolished. Ms. Chung, a librarian at the
Berlin University of the Arts, took a leave of absence. Song Dschun
(pronounced ‘Joon') who was to have begun a post-doctoral course at
a U.S. university last fall, postponed those plans and Song Rinn, a
pediatrician, has interrupted his practice to come here
frequently.
The controversies surrounding the case are many.
Korea's harsh security law, which bans even expressions of sympathy
or approval for North Korea's political system, are outlawed, and
the law has been applied in the past even to those who spoke in what
they thought was private. The United States and other Western
democracies have repeatedly voiced their concerns about the law and
its application, to varying degrees depending on the political
flavor of administrations in power.
And although Mr. Song is not
accused of stealing national security secrets from the South and
giving them to the North, he is accused of having a double identity
- as a senior member of the North Korean ruling elite. He is also
accused of spreading, not studying, the North's ideology and
promoting it among Korean students in Germany.
Mr. Song has
denied that he violated the National Security Law, but he and other
critics of the law say they also view it as an institutional and
fundamental denial of human rights. They say South Korean society is
still gripped by a Cold War mentality that sees Reds under every bed
and discourages any exploration of left-wing ideologies. In short,
the Songs say, the South Korean society that jailed Mr. Song is
still undemocratic.
"I was shocked. My friends in Germany were
shocked," Song Dschun said. He arrived in Korea for the first time
late last year. "Prosecutors here dealt with him as if he were a
murderer or rapist just because of his research work. I could not
imagine that this was happening in my father's homeland."
"Here
in Korea, you have to make a choice, either this or that," he
continued. "That is something I don't understand. In Europe, if you
don't agree with others, you tolerate them. And I believe that is
democracy."
"My husband was already ruled guilty even before
appearing in court," Ms. Chung added. "It was politics and the media
that handed down a verdict by repeatedly saying that he is a spy."
Ms. Chung said she has mixed feelings about having come to
Korea. "It may be the case that if I had known beforehand what I
would in Korea now, I would not have come here. I feel like I am
being destroyed day by day," she said. "But I hope my family's agony
will become a turning point for Korean society to advance."
Song
Dschun says he has the same confused feelings of anger and affinity
for his father's homeland, but is ready to fight both for his
father's freedom and the principles he believes in.
The family,
in addition to daily visits to Mr. Song, has staged frequent
protests at the National Assembly to seek the abolition of the
security law. They have sent petitions to President Roh Moo-hyun.
They and their supporters are preparing a documentary film on Mr.
Song for the Berlin International Film Festival next month.
Some
of the supporters are influential in German society. Juergen
Habermas, a well-known German scholar who was at one time Mr. Song's
teacher, and the Nobel literature laureate Guenter Gras recently
sent letters to the court here complaining that outdated national
security laws should not be used to judge Mr. Song's academic
achievements.
The court could hand down a verdict in the case
tomorrow, depending on how it decides to handle the refusal of Hwang
Jang-yop to appear. Mr. Hwang, a North Korean official who earlier
charged publicly that Mr. Song was a North Korean policymaker, has
balked at giving testimony.
"I think my husband is being
victimized by politics. I want the verdict not to be politically
influenced," Ms. Chung said.
Each day during the court's
hearings, war veterans and conservatives rallied to demand the
execution of "the greatest North Korean spy." Support rallies also
abounded. Other countries could well also make judgements of the
state of Korean society depending on how the court rules and how the
matter is eventually resolved.
by Min Seong-jae <iamfine@joongang.co.kr>
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