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| Korea |
| South Korea Aids and Abets North’s Shenanigans |
| 2003-06-05 |
| EFL. This guy is a high-level defector from North Korea. The article has lots of interesting observations, but this part about South Korea seems most pertinent. He's talking about finally arriving in South Korea after escaping from N.K. and then from China. Upon my arrival, I was debriefed by South Korea's National Intelligence Service, and occasionally put in the hands of unsophisticated American questioners in Seoul. Remarkably, the South Korean officials made it clear to me that I would be in danger if I were to speak out about the WMD programs I had worked on or the atrocities I had witnessed. It soon became obvious that they feared my testimony because it might jeopardize South Korea's "sunshine policy," which seeks to keep the North's repressive regime in power in order to avoid the economic consequences to the South were it to collapse. Incredibly, Seoul seems unwilling to accept that propping up Kim Jong Il's regime has had grave consequences for the world. They aren't alone. How many Americans even KNOW what is going on in North Korea, despite the Axis of Evil designation? While traveling to the China-North Korea border last year, I met with former colleagues and learned that the production at our old missile guidance system plant was up to normal levels following receipt by the regime of substantial amounts of foreign currency from the South. In 1997, when I left the plant, the output had shriveled to 30% of the pre-Nodong One launch in 1993 due to the lack of hard currency that had limited the capacity to pay for Japanese parts imports. Last year, facing increased pressures from the South Korean Intelligence Service to remain an invisible man, I decided to do all I could to escape from South Korea's hands. I obtained a passport under the pretense of traveling to Japan, and, with the aid of an underground-railroad activist, obtained a visa that brought me to the U.S. last month. While here, I put on a hood to protect my identity, held a press conference in Washington and testified before the Senate in open and closed sessions about what I know about Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction. The reaction to my activities on the part of the South Korean intelligence was immediate. My wife, a North Korean escapee who'd been captured by the Chinese and sent to a North Korean prison before escaping again, was subjected to threatening phone calls from police and intelligence officials that so terrorized her as to cause her collapse and hospitalization. Thanks to the intervention of Sens. Richard Lugar, Peter Fitzgerald and Daniel Akaka--to whom I shall remain forever grateful--South Korean officials have since been contacted about the treatment of my wife, and the harassment and intimidation have, for the moment, ceased. U.S. Senators really CAN do a lot of good when they want to, and sometimes they do. |
| Posted by:lkl (formerly Kathy) |