Post-NDRP: The Yeongnam Committee Incident of 1998
In July 1998, police in South Korea’s south coast second city of Busan
announced that they had arrested and were investigating 16 members of left wing
civic and labor organizations from nearby Ulsan on suspicion of violating the
state’s controversial National Security Law.
According to the police, the group had, following the formation of the Anti-Imperialist
Youth League back in 1989, formed the South Gyeongsang Province [Yeongnam] Committee in 1992. Under its
auspices, they were accused of disseminating materials benefiting North Korea
and instigating illegal labor strikes in Busan and Ulsan.
Park Kyeong Soon, who ran Neulpureun Bookstore whilst heading the Committee, Kim Chang Hyeon, who, as head of East Ulsan
District Office, was a government official as well as a Committee member, and the
rest were soon prosecuted. Park received 15 years in jail and Kim 7 years. Jung Dae Yeon, formerly of the Ulsan Coalition for Democratic National Unification, and Im Dong
Seok of the labor group Forward 2001 got 8-9 years. Park Seong Su of the Ulsan branch of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the remaining defendants all received between 3 and 4-year
sentences.
However, in August 1999 the Supreme Court in Seoul ruled that the evidence used
to convict the men was insufficient to prove that they had “formed an anti-state
organization.” Eventually, they applied only the charge of forming
an organization
benefiting the enemy. Park’s sentence fell to seven
years, and Kim’s to two.
From the period following his release right up to early 2012, Park worked as deputy head of a
policy research center affiliated with the ultra-left wing Democratic Labor
Party (DLP). While there, he wrote an article entitled, “Analysis and Prospects for the Chosun Workers’
Party Delegates’ Conference.” In it, he said of the North Korean conference, which took
place on September 28th, 2010 in Pyongyang:
We don’t have any information on the selection
process of Kim Jong Eun. There is absolutely no material upon which to make a
judgment […] North Korea has its own unique
succession theory […] Based on National Defense Commission
Chairman Kim Jong Il’s experience, their succession theory […] appears to have the
approval of a large majority of the North Korean people.
At the time of the incident, Kim Chang Hyeon had been a sitting government official, so local people were understandably surprised to find him
violating the National Security Law and spending two years in prison. Regardless, after emerging from his incarceration in July 2000, Kim served on presidential
candidate Kwon Young Gil’s election campaign in 2002, and in 2004 as secretary-general of the Democratic Labor Party and chair of a party chapter in
Ulsan. In April 2012 he ran as a Unified Progressive Party candidate for the
National Assembly in a northern district of Ulsan, but lost.
 This Donga Ilbo article from July 27, 1998 concerns the arrest of Kim Chang Hyeon. | Image: Destination Pyongyang/Naver |
Post-NDRP: Later Activities of Key Players
Kim Young Hwan (once
known as Gwanaksan-1) had ideologically parted with North Korea before
the criminal investigation into the NDRP began, and had even gone so far as to
make overthrowing the North Korean regime his aim. In the process of the
investigation, the fact that Kim had already verifiably changed his position
and sought to persuade others to do the same was taken into account; his
prosecution was suspended.
Thereafter, Kim jumped
fully into North Korean democratization activities and, in 1998, joined Han Ki
Hong, the author of this book, Hong Jin Pyo, Jo Hyeok, and other 386-Generation
converts to launch the bimonthly publication Sidae Jeongsin (Zeitgeist). This groundbreaking journal advocated North Korean democratization and the
restoration of Korean ideals; a new Zeitgeist, if you will.
A year later in 1999, Kim
took a leading role in the formation of the Network for North Korean Democracy
and Human Rights (NKnet), the first NGO to take as its goal the realization of
democracy and human rights in North Korea. For its first decade of advocating
for North Korean human rights, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea
awarded NKnet the Republic of Korea Human Rights Prize at the end of 2009. Kim
Young Hwan serves as NKnet’s chief researcher and one of the editors of the (now-quarterly)
Sidae Jeongsin. He gives public lectures
and writes; at the end of 2011 he published “Post-Kim Jong Il” in the
immediate aftermath of Kim Jong Il’s death. He is now writing about his
life as an activist and arrest by the Chinese Ministry of State Security two
years ago.
Kim Young Hwan’s liaison with North Korea, Jo Yu Sik (aka Gwancheolbong),
founded and has been running the online bookstore Aladdin since before the NDRP
was unmasked. The authorities recognized his conversion alongside that of Kim
Young Hwan, and chose not to prosecute. He continues to devote himself to his
business, which has grown into one of the biggest independent online bookstores
in South Korea.
Ha Young Ok received an 8-year sentence in September 1999 for his role at the
top of the NDRP. During his trial, Ha alleged that investigators had beaten him
to extract information. In April 2003 he was given a presidential pardon and emerged
from prison in Daejeon. Since then his activities, aside from teaching math at
a private institute and occasional appearances in left wing media outlets, have
been unknown.
The political editor
of the monthly leftist magazine Mal, Kim Kyeong Hwan (formerly known as Gwanmobong), was sentenced to 4 and a half years in jail
for maintaining contact with and aiding North Korean agents. In 2002, while
serving his sentence, he published a book, “A Bird Who Dreams of Soaring
Looks Down Upon the Earth.” He was released in April 2003 and by the end
of the first decade of the 2000s was director of public relations for The Hope
Institute, which markets itself as a “citizen participatory research
institute.”
Southern Gyeonggi Province Committee Chairman Lee Seok Ki went into hiding for
three years after the authorities unveiled the NDRP, but was arrested in May
2002. He was given a presidential pardon on Independence Day (August 15th) in
2003. Afterwards he worked as a director of the NL (National
Liberation)-leaning online media site Voice of the People [VoP; Minjung-ui Sori] and founded the Social
Trend Institute, which conducts public opinion surveys.
In the 2012 general
election for the National Assembly Lee was the second proportional
representation candidate on the Unified Progressive Party ticket. He won the
controversial election and became a member of the National Assembly, but soon
found himself embroiled in a nationwide controversy over alleged attempts to
form a Revolutionary Organization, RO, and discuss, though not action, plans to
overthrow the Republic of Korea.
Lee Eui Yeob, chairman of the Busan Regional Committee of the NDRP, was
arrested and imprisoned in September 2000. Released in 2001, he later became
active in labor union education and organizing. In 2008 he ran for the National
Assembly in the Geumjung district of Busan, but lost.
