Dear list members,

Yesterday, our German colleague, Prof. Song Du Yul from
Munster, has been 
arrested at last in South Korea. As you have certainly heard,
he was 
accused of the things (membership in the North Korean Workers'
Party, 
activities as North Korean Politburo member - which he denies,
and so on) 
that -while still criminalized by the South Korean National
Security Law - 
are certainly not crimes in Germany he is a citizen of, nor in
most other 
countries of the world. Moreover, he was arrested after coming
to South 
Korea on his own and making clear that he no more feels the
same sympathies 
to the North Korean system he had once felt. As some South
Korean news 
sources state, his arrest may be interpreted as a "gesture of
appeasement" 
by the Roh regime towards these political/juridical circles
that long 
considered Prof. Song's "intrinsic" (relativist) approach to
North Korean 
realities and his peculiar understanding of the tasks of
Korean nationalism 
a major threat for their ideological/cultural domination.
While there are 
all grounds to hope that Prof. Song will be set free soon any
way - as it 
is absolutely clear that he poses no "security threat" today -
I still 
wonder whether it is not a moral obligation on the part of all
the European 
Koreanists to register our protest against the arrest of our
German 
colleague. However controversial his views and actions might
be, the arrest 
of a European Koreanists on the grounds of the Cold War-time
law repeatedly 
criticized by many human right bodies, doesn't set a good
precedent.

Best wishes,

Vladimir Tikhonov