Defectors accuse South Korean politician opposing unification of being a spy
(Image: iStock.com/Pandagolik)
Like a surgeon who recommends a heart transplant, when a politician says South Korea should change its core national objective, people need to trust him before his radical therapy can even be considered. A quack doesn’t have a chance.
Thus it was that after Im Jong-seok, who served as Chief of Staff in the Moon Jae-In administration, proposed that South Korea should give up on reunification with North Korea and just “be happy,” he was condemned from all sides.
Figures in his own party criticized him, the presidential office said his proposal contradicted the constitution (which commits the country to reunify), and conservatives and defectors said he’s a spy.
Im’s suggested new approach was a response to North Korea’s rejection of reunification and characterization of the South as its “main enemy.” In fact, it was the first speech by a prominent politician directly responding to the change that Kim Jong-un announced at the end of last year.
Speaking at the 6th-anniversary ceremony of the September 19 Pyongyang Joint Declaration between Moon and Kim Jong-un, he said: “The North Korean regime has declared the relationship between the North and South as hostile nations rather than a single ethnic group, and the hard-line policies of the current government have made unification impossible.”
“Unification without a commitment to trust and peace would only lead to mutual destruction, so let’s stop fighting and accept the current reality as it is,” he said. “Let’s not unify. Isn’t it better to live separately while respecting and helping each other to be happy together?”
For North Korean defectors, this idea is hippy nonsense. Given that the 26 million residents of North Korea have been reduced to a state of slavery, they cannot receive respect, nor can they ever be truly happy.
Im made no mention of the human rights of actual North Koreans. He only used the collective terms “North Korea” and “North Korean regime,” while claiming that the two Koreas are “peaceful states” rather than “hostile states.”
He also brought up the question of abolishing the Ministry of Unification and doing away with the National Security Law.
That these are North Korean talking points brings the spotlight on Im. Were he a noted pro-freedom activist or a conservative, that would be one thing. But Im’s background raises eyebrows.
When he was a student in the 1980s, Im Jong-seok was the chairman of the National Council of Student Representatives, an anti-government group. He was jailed for his part in arranging for student Im Su-kyung to go to North Korea on an unauthorized visit to celebrate the 13th World Youth and Student Festival, an international event for communist countries. His five-year sentence was for aiding and abetting special public duty obstruction, violations of the National Security Law (among others), as well as violations related to violent acts, usage of incendiary devices, and violations of laws concerning gatherings and protests. Im was released after three and a half years and was pardoned in 1999.
Im’s controversial proposal brought this past record back into focus. One individual, Kim, 54, who was previously involved in pro-North Korean activities as part of the radical student “jucheist” group with Im, but who later changed his views after witnessing the famine in North Korea in the 1990s and listening to testimonies from defectors, and now is working at a North Korean human rights organization, pointed out in an interview with our agency:
“It was clear to me that Im Jong-seok has not changed at all,” he said. “In my view, he still subscribes to the juche ideology and follows North Korea. Given that Kim Jong-un has declared South Korea an enemy and introduced a two-state policy on the Korean Peninsula, I cannot help but question the identity of Im Jong-seok when he says, ‘Let’s not unify.'”
Meanwhile, Joo, 56, who was also dedicated to the student movement when she was young, and now studies unification at Soongsil University, directly labeled Im Jong-seok as “a really bad guy.”
“I can somewhat understand the anti-government activities he engaged in during the military regime to fight for democracy in the past,” she said. “However, to echo Kim Jong-un’s fallacies today by saying, ‘Let’s not unify,’ is a statement that negates all of his past activities and raises doubts about his identity.”
North Korean defector groups held a press conference on September 23 at the National Assembly to condemn Im. During the press conference, Assemblyman Park Choong-kwon, himself a defector, made the following remarks:
“Im Jong-Seok, the former Chief of Staff at the Blue House during the Moon Jae-In administration, made the unconstitutional and pro-North statements, ‘Let’s not unify. The North and South should recognize each other’s systems and coexist.’ He denied the constitutional values of South Korea and drove a nail into the hearts of the 34,000 North Korean defectors and 10 million separated families who have relatives in the North. He also ignored the human rights of the 26 million residents of North Korea.”
Kim, 43, a defector who fled North Korea in 2010 and currently works with a human rights organization, stated, “Not only did he promote juche ideology in the past and commit criminal offenses, but seeing him now repeating Kim Jong-un’s words verbatim makes me question Im Jong-seok’s identity. How could he act this way if he’s not a spy?”
Zane is a defector from North Korea. Before defecting in 2022, he worked at a state-run North Korean company based in Russia. Prior to his assignment in Russia, he had worked at the external affairs department of a company affiliated with the DPRK's Escort Bureau. He graduated from Pyongyang University of Architecture.
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