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Brawl Near Koreas' Border
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As the balloon imbroglio made clear here Tuesday, not all the anger is in North Korea.
Supporters of the two South Korean presidents who preceded Lee -- Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun -- have voiced worry that a decade of political and economic cooperation between the two Koreas is being jeopardized.
Protesters here chanted that Lee's government should stop the balloons, honor the South's previous commitments to invest in the North and save the Kaesong complex, where 88 South Korean companies have invested more than $440 million to build factories that employ 35,000 North Koreans.
In Seoul, several North Korea experts say Lee will probably have to find a face-saving way to calm North Korean nerves or risk an escalation in political tension that could further damage investor confidence in South Korea's crisis-weakened economy.
"Lee's government will make a critical mistake if it conditions all aid on change in North Korea," said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of political science at Dongguk University in Seoul. "Kim Jong Il's government will not change until it collapses."
One person with no interest in calming tension between the two Koreas is Park, the North Korean defector and activist.
"Hatred of Kim Jong Il motivates me," he said.
Park, 39, defected with his mother and two brothers in 1999, leaving behind his fiancee and two uncles.
"My uncles were beaten to death in prison," he said. "North Korean intelligence people visited the woman I was engaged to. They sexually abused her. I regret leaving her behind so much."
Thanks to his father's high position in the government, Park said, he had lived a relatively comfortable, even elite, life in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. He was a member of the propaganda department of the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League, a group named after North Korea's founder, who is also the father of Kim Jong Il.
But Park and his family fled, he said, when his father -- then a Japan-based spy for the North Korean government -- warned them that the family might soon be caught up in a purge of intelligence officials.
With the help of his father's contacts in the security forces, Park and his family found their way to the Chinese border, swam across a river and eventually reached South Korea, he said.
