Go to Key Stories
Seoul Hard-Liners Take Dim View of Unification Talk
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 30, 1997; Page A14
An article in a conservative publication last July accused the lawyer, Lee Jang Hie, of being pro-North Korea -- the hermetic, Stalinist state that has been the South's bitter enemy since the Korean peninsula was divided after World War II.
On Nov. 26, Lee was seized by five plainclothes policemen at the Seoul airport as he returned from a trip to Tokyo. They grabbed his arms, took his luggage, stuffed him into a car and tossed him into a cell in the Seocho police station near Seoul District Court. They took his belt, watch and wallet and left him barefoot with three other criminal suspects. A judge ordered Lee's release that same night, but since then, he has been subjected to threatening phone calls and another police raid.
The reasons for his ordeal include South Korea's stringent national security law and the high state of alarm within the country's security apparatus about anyone suspected of sympathizing with the hostile North. For years, South Korea's obsession with preparedness in the event of an attack from the North has resembled the 1950s hunt in the United States for communist sympathizers, with little regard for civil liberties of those accused.
"This law has many possibilities for interpretation," Lee said. "The prosecutor can interpret it at will."
In the 1980s, Kim Dae Jung -- then opposition leader and now president-elect -- and many legislators from his party were among those who were jailed under those laws, and many people had hoped that his election last week would mean a reform of the national security laws. But to win the presidency, Kim forged a political alliance with Kim Jong Pil, the founder of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, and most analysts now predict that the strict legislation will remain unchanged.
"For a long time, Kim Dae Jung has insisted that the national security law should be amended and that he wants to substitute a law of democratic order," said Kim Geun Tae, an ally of the president-elect and a member of the National Assembly who spent five years in jail in the 1980s under the security laws. But, the assembly member says, "because of his coalition with Kim Jong Pil, in the short term it will be impossible to amend the national security law."
That means people like lawyer-author Lee could continue to be subjected to harassment by South Korea's powerful security apparatus. A judge has twice ruled that there is no case against Lee, and he won a civil court case against the conservative publication for damages; nevertheless, the government barred him from traveling outside South Korea between Nov. 28 and Feb. 28.
"It is like McCarthyism [in the 1950s] or witch hunting in the Middle Ages," Lee said. "They are worried now that the Cold War is over. They worry about losing their positions and want to keep the old conflicts going. For this goal they need a scapegoat. I'm a scapegoat."
As he tells it, Lee's story began more than two years ago, when economic crises and a leadership vacuum in North Korea made many people in the South begin seriously to contemplate the possibility of reunification of the peninsula.
A publishing house asked Lee, a law professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and president of the Asian Social Science Research Institute, to edit a three-part book that would include children's essays about unification, Lee's responses to their questions and some factual reference materials about North Korea.
"The basic premise of the book was that unless children objectively and fairly understood about both South and North Korea, Korean unification would be impossible in the future," said Lee, who also served as an adviser to the Red Cross and the South Korean Unification Ministry.
The children, ignorant about the do's and don'ts of political propriety, asked some basic and, in the minds of conservative critics of reunification, provocative questions. They wanted to know whether South Korea's national anthem, flag or capital would change. They wanted to know what would happen to Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, and whether there would still be two presidents.
"The young generation has no contact with North Korea," Lee said. "Young kids think that North Koreans are like monsters. I wanted to help them see North Koreans as humans."
"I hadn't the slightest idea of favoring North Korea in my writing," he added. "In fact, I clearly mentioned in my book that North Korea will gradually and hopefully head for a free democratic and market-oriented economy . . . and that history has already shown the defects of communist systems through their collapse."
That was not good enough for the conservative Chosun Monthly Journal, whose July article prompted an outdoor rally at which calls were made for Lee's detention and trial as a North Korean collaborator.
Then the phone calls started. "I'll kill you," said some callers. Others said, "You are a communist" or asked, "Why do you teach communist ideas to our children?"
Lee responded to the Chosun Monthly with a civil court case demanding space for a rebuttal and for monetary damages if the magazine refused. He marshaled a letter of support from 330 professors. His first rebuttal appears in this month's magazine, and a second is to appear soon.
The national security apparatus remains on alert. On Dec. 4, police staked out his house to serve a second summons, although the judge again rejected the case, saying it had no foundation.
Lee said he is "very discouraged. People are still afraid of this law. It has the power to destroy anyone; you can lose your job, your career, your school." He said he has benefited from the support of the media and influential friends. "An ordinary person would be finished," he said.
And he confessed that even he has become more cautious in print. "When I write articles now, my wife wants to read them; she is my supervisor," he said. "I've been very outspoken before, but now I'm careful."
© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
