Police: Professor Kang Took Orders from North

It was confirmed yesterday that the prosecution and police have decided that the arrest of Kang Jeong-gu, a sociology professor at Dongguk University accused of violating the National Security Law, is inevitable, given that his actions may have been at the guidance of Pyongyang.

In particular, it was revealed that a large number of Kang’s theses and columns on the Korean War and the character of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) were posted on a North Korean propaganda group’s website.

It was confirmed that the prosecution and police expressed their opinions in an arrest warrant and statement of detention for Kang already made by them that a string of Kang’s remarks and actions coincided with guidelines advocated by the Anti-Imperialistic and National Democratic Front (AINDF), a propaganda body aimed at South Korea under the direction of the Unification Front of North Korea’s Workers’ Party.

The prosecution and police stated through those documents that because Kang’s remarks and actions are a breach of national order and create controversy over the Constitution and the identity of South Korea above and beyond the freedom of academics and speech, Kang should be put into jail.

The prosecution and police, in particular, stressed that the moment Kang made these remarks coincided with the ongoing controversy surrounding the withdrawal of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur’s statue.

The prosecution and police expressed their views through an arrest warrant for Kang that stated the AINDF expressed its stance through a New Year’s message posted on its website early this year that this year would be the first year that the U.S. would withdraw its troops stationed in South Korea, and that this would be triggered by toppling the statue of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur in Incheon.

On top of that, the prosecution and police said that the South’s headquarters of the Pan-National Student Association for Fatherland Unification and Hanchongryun’s claims, in which they insist that the withdrawal of the U.S. General MacArthur statue is a declaration of the will to expel the USFK, the root of all vice, are in line with Kang’s remarks.

A summary of an anti-MacArthur white paper posted on the AINDF’s website that police submitted to the prosecution contains that a great number of Kang’s theses and columns on the Korean War and the character of the USFK.

“Since Kang himself did not post these writings on the AINDF’s homepage, as well as the fact that its server exists in Japan, it is difficult to confirm who posted these writings,” a security agency official said.

But the official added, “Kang’s writings can be viewed as evidence of a direct or indirect influence to pro-Pyongyang groups in Seoul.”

In a 40-page arrest warrant, prosecutors attached evidence for arresting Kang, such as documents that contained the New Year’s message of the AINDF, Kang’s lecture contents, theses and remarks posted on the AINDF’s website, and the North’s state-run Korea Central News Agency’s broadcast that shows Kang is conducting his work at the AINDF’s orders.

During a lecture sponsored by the Incheon Unification Solidarity, a progressive civic group, at the end of June right before the controversy of withdrawal of the U.S. General MacArthur statue located in Freedom Park in Incheon was created, Kang insisted, “If the public knew U.S. General MacArthur’s true character, they would pull down his statue.”

Kang posted a column that insists that the Korean War was a unification war attempted by the North’s leadership on the Dailyseoprise, an Internet media outlet, on July 27 right after conservative and progressive civic groups clashed with each other over MacArthur’s statue in July 17.

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