MCLC: S. Korean activist detained in China

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: S. Korean activist detained in China
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (5/31/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/asia/south-korean-democracy-campaig
ner-is-detained-in-china.html

Relations Tested in Case of South Korean Activist Detained in China
By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — In a case that has tested relations between Beijing
and Seoul, a prominent South Korean campaigner for democracy in North
Korea has been under detention in China for more than two months, and
South Korean officials said on Thursday that he was being denied access to
consular services and a lawyer.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said China had dismissed repeated
demands for details about the charge, “endangering national security,” on
which the activist, Kim Young-hwan, was detained. Although China insists
that it is handling the case according to its laws, officials in Seoul
have condemned it as a violation of human rights. International rights
activists and the European Parliament have demanded Mr. Kim’s release.

For many South Koreans, Mr. Kim’s case reinforces China’s image here as an
overbearing neighbor, despite their thriving bilateral trade ties. The
case also highlights the Chinese government’s sensitivity regarding any
activities that might cause instability in its ally North Korea.

“China is treating a campaigner for democracy in North Korea as if he were
one of its dissidents,” said Ha Tae-keung, a rights activist and member of
the South Korean Parliament. “I believe North Korea is behind this and
that China is effectively acting on its behalf.”

Mr. Kim, 49, was arrested in Dalian, in the northeastern Chinese province
of Liaoning, on March 29 with three South Korean colleagues. The Chinese
Ministry of State Security transferred the four men to Dandong, a city on
the North Korean border, where rights activists suspect that the Chinese
have been investigating them in consultation with North Korean officials.

Mr. Kim’s colleagues have said little about what he was doing in China
other than, in the words of one colleague, “He went to the North
Korea-China border the way people working for democracy in Myanmar travel
to the Myanmar-Thai border.”

North Korea has reasons to dislike Mr. Kim. He is a skilled campaigner
against dictatorship. In the 1980s, he was a crucial ideologue in the
South Korean student movement that opposed the government of the military
strongman Chun Doo-hwan and eventually forced it to agree to democratic
reforms.

Mr. Kim was widely recognized as a mastermind behind the students’
transformation into a pro-North Korean, anti-American political force that
fed off Koreans’ perception of their nation as divided in the interests of
superpowers.

Mr. Kim was imprisoned and tortured in the 1980s. He has since said that
it was not the torture, but a meeting with the North Korean founding
president, Kim Il-sung, arranged surreptitiously by the North, that
changed his thinking. The activist said he found a babbling, ignorant
autocrat, not the fierce nationalist and former anti-imperialist guerrilla
leader he had helped lionize. On his return home, he became a vocal
opponent of North Korea.

On April 26, nearly a month after Mr. Kim’s detention, the Chinese
authorities allowed a South Korean consular officer to meet with him for
30 minutes. Chinese officials said the three other men had waived the
right to consular services.
During the meeting, which took place with Chinese officials present, the
consular officer asked Mr. Kim if he had been tortured or abused. Mr. Kim
replied, “How can I discuss such things here?”

Requests for more consular meetings have since been denied, the South
Korean Foreign Ministry said.