Song Du-yul Sentenced to Seven Years In Prison

South Korean-German scholar Song Du-yul, who was indicted on charges of violating the National Security Law, was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.

The 24th Department of Criminal Judgment (chief judge Lee Dae-kyung presiding) of the Seoul District Court handed down the sentence at the first trial on March 30, saying, “It is recognized that Mr. Song had acted as a member of the North Korean Worker’s Party Politburo and taken a leading role in the party.”

“In view of facts that the accused had thoroughly covered up his joining the Worker’s Party and entering North Korea, it is recognized that he has used the alias ‘Kim Chul-su’ in order to discharge his duty of a unification front toward the South Korea even though he was appointed as a powerful substitute member of the Politburo under the appraisal that he had praised the Kim Il-sing regime,” the court said.

However, in regard of his entering the North to hold an academic seminar between the South and the North, the court acquitted him of the charges of infiltration, extrication, assembly, and communication from the standpoint of the National Security Law.

“The accused didn’t speak only for North Korea, and the seminar was a legal event with the approval of the Unification Ministry and the National Intelligence Agency, and he was not in the leading position of the seminar,” the court explained.

“There are opinions that our society has to embrace in accordance with the détente mood between the South and the North that are possible only under the premise of self-reflection, but the accused came home to Korea under the risk of being charged, and we judged that he had no intention of making an apology according to his attitude during the prosecution’s investigation and his court statement,” the court said, making its position clear about the severe punishment.

“Song disguised himself as an objective scholar using the term ‘a man between boundaries’, which led people to a false recognition of him, and this was an obstacle to peaceful unification which has to be based on the cool-headed recognition of realities,” the court said about Song’s expression of himself as ‘a man between boundaries’.

Song was indicted on charges that he was willing to go to the North in 1973 and join the Worker’s Party, and discharged his duty of propagation of “Juche” (self-reliance) philosophy in and out of Korea after he was appointed as a substitute member of the Politburo. At the time of Kim Il-sung’s death, he was appointed as a 23rd funeral commissioner under the alias of ‘Kim Chul-su’ and participated in the funeral.

Jin-Young Hwang buddy@donga.com