South
Korea charges scholar with improper ties to
North
Agence France-Presse Wednesday,
November
19, 2003
SEOUL South Korean prosecutors on
Wednesday indicted Song Doo
Yul, a German scholar of Korean origin, charging him with
maintaining
unauthorized links with the North Korean
leadership.
According to the
indictment Song, 59, visited North Korea more than 20 times,
met the late leader
Kim Il Sung in 1991 and rose to a senior position in the
Politburo. He was also
accused of received up to $100,000 in cash from
Pyongyang.
South Korea's
national security law outlaws unauthorized contact with North
Korea.
Song, who grew up in South Korea and went to
Germany in 1967 to
study, became a key figure among Germany-based South Korean
dissidents opposed
to then-President Park Chung Hee's repressive military
government in
Seoul.
The indictment comes nearly two months after the
philosophy
professor at Münster University returned to South Korea,
ending 37 years of
self-imposed exile.
The prosecution has also accused
Song of attempted
fraud by filing a lawsuit seeking damages from Hwang Jang Yop,
North Korea's
most famous defector, who said Song was an alternate member of
the Politburo
under the name of Kim Chul Su. Hwang's accusation was deemed
to be true, the
prosecutors said.
"We've decided to bring Song's
case to court and keep
him in custody because he failed to show remorse while being
interrogated during
detention," a prosecutor, Park Man, told Yonhap news
agency.
In a press
statement Song's defense advisers denounced the application of
what he called
the "anachronistic National Security
Law."
The South Korean president,
Roh Moo Hyun, who began his political career fighting military
dictators, urged
that tolerance be displayed in handling the case.
Song
has said he wanted
to sever all ties with Pyongyang and give up his German
citizenship so that he
could remain in South Korea.
