The motherland of ‘Kim Il Sung Award’ winner

Yoo Dong-ryeol, director of the Korean Institute of Liberal Democracy, met with Noh Kil-nam, 70, and had heated verbal dispute in Los Angeles last week. Noh, a Korean American, has been operating “Minjok Tongshin (or people’s news),” a pro-North Korea news site, since 1999. He took the lead in protest rallies to oust President Park Geun-hye with some ethnic Koreans in front of the Korean consulate general in Los Angeles. When asked by Yoo “Why are you turning a blind eye to North Korean human rights abuse committed by the Kim Jong Un regime?,” Noh said, “There are no human rights problems at all in the North,” bold-facedly defending the North Korean system.

During President Park’s attendance at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, protest rallies conducted by pro-North Korea groups and some ethnic Koreans in the U.S. exceeded in terms of severity the level of simple anti-South Korea demonstrations. They followed the president’s movement at the pretext to demand enactment of a special act related to the investigation of the Sewol tragedy, staging "stalking protest," and made sexually abusive languages, and carried banners reading “Revive the dead children, and you die immediately.” After reading a report filed by a Dong-A Ilbo correspondent that described the situation in the protest rallies, people posted a flurry of online comments, with some expressing anger by saying, “The protestors defamed not only the president but also the Korean people and the Republic of Korea.”

Although he hailed from South Korea, he seems to be considering North Korea as his motherland given that he heralded the schedules for protest rallies of abusive language and reported on situations concretely via his news site. As a U.S. citizen, he earned his doctorate degree from Kim Il Sung University with a dissertation entitled “The study on Korean people`s unity and grand unity achieved by Northern Fatherland (North Korea)” in 2008. He also received the “Kim Il Sung Award” in April this year for his lauding of the North Korean regime at the standing committee of the North’s Supreme People’s Assembly. Well aware of his personal history and acts, Yoo called him a "cultural spy."

Even though Noh is openly commending the North and attacking the South, the South Korean government has responded sloppily. He freely frequents the South Korean consulate general in Los Angeles at the pretext of visiting the memorial alter for victims in the Sewol disaster, a situation that is effectively the same as a household opening up its doors to a thief. The government labeled Noh`s "Minjok Tongshin" as a pro-North Korean site and blocked South Koreans’ access to it in November 2004. Despite this, he unconstrainedly visited South Korea not only during the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, but also the Lee Myung-bak administration. South Korea cannot afford to show unconditional lenience to those who side with Pyongyang.