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  



2004.01.25