<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On October 24th, 2006, South Korea\u2019s state <\/span><\/p>\n The Democratic Labor Party, heavily implicated in the affair, accused state intelligence of seeking to fabricate an \u201canti-North, anti-unification frenzy\u201d through \u201cfalse accusations.\u201d However, the Supreme Court ruled against this speculative version of events. Instead, the accused were found guilty of violating South Korea\u2019s controversial National Security Law, which forbids so much as contacting North Koreans, much less passing them sensitive information.<\/span><\/p>\n Jang had come to the attention of intelligence It was subsequently found that Jang had in Prosecutors alleged that the organization\u2019s Those implicated all pled the Fifth Amendment, using every institutional avenue available to delay judicial proceedings. This made the prosecution\u2019s work more The role of Choi Ki Young was of particularly relevance. In the end, the president’s office also grew concerned. Reports at The revised strategic approach bears obvious comparison <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On October 24th, 2006, South Korea\u2019s state intelligence agency, the NIS, arrested three men: Michael Jang, former Democratic Labor Party (DLP) central committee member Lee Jeong Hun, and the head of a private education institute, Son Jeong Mok. According to investigators, the three were suspected of forming the core of a shadowy group called \u201cIlsimhoe.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":28377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nintelligence agency, the NIS, arrested three men: Michael Jang, former
\nDemocratic Labor Party (DLP) central committee member Lee Jeong Hun, and the
\nhead of a private education institute, Son Jeong Mok. According to
\ninvestigators, the three were suspected of forming the core of a shadowy group called
\n\u201cIlsimhoe.\u201d<\/i> They and two others were said to have visited
\nChina in March that year, whereupon information was
\npassed to North Korean agents on a range of matters, including personnel data on a South Korean political party.<\/span><\/p>\n
\noperatives some years earlier. He had been part of the democratization student
\nmovement in the South, which the NIS monitored very closely. <\/span>They noticed that <\/span>he also took visits
\nto China that appeared unrelated to any of his business interests; the
\nsecrecy with which he undertook many of his activities raised alarm in Seoul.
\nIt was during the process of gathering further evidence that the NIS found
\ninformation on his co-defendants. Evidence of the triumvirate\u2019s secret meetings
\nwith North Korean operatives led to the rapid expansion of an existing
\ninvestigation.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nfact visited North Korea secretly for the first time in 1989. On subsequent visits throughout the 1990s, he swore an oath of
\nloyalty to the Chosun Workers\u2019 Party and, like Kim Young Hwan, was ordered to set up a pro-North underground organization. Finally, in January 2002 he did as ordered, forming Ilsimhoe and leveraging it to acquire information
\nto pass back to the North.
\n
\npolitical program and structure were typical of a pro-North Korean underground
\npolitical party in the South, and the Supreme Court agreed, concluding that the
\ngroup espoused the tenets of Juche and had received orders from the Chosun
\nWorkers\u2019 Party. In its only act of dissent, the court, though it accepted that Ilsimhoe had transferred sensitive information to the North, judged that
\nespionage had not been the group’s primary purpose.<\/p>\n
\ndifficult; however, even this was ultimately insufficient to stop the case from putting another nail in the coffin of pro-North Korea sentiment in the
\nSouth.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nChoe, who had risen from the rank and file to become deputy on the DLP standing
\ncommittee, was found to have passed information on the party\u2019s core membership
\nto North Korea. This led to a schism within the party between the now National Liberation (NL) and People\u2019s Democracy (PD) factions. The NL faction
\nopposed the expulsion of anyone who had been involved in the scandal. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nthe time allege that the investigation was pointing strongly toward the gates of the
\nBlue House. This may have been what led former student activists working therein to ask then-President
\nRoh Moo Hyun to halt it. In the process, the head of the NIS left his post.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe Ilsimhoe case is an important one in the historical development of Pyongyang\u2019s
\nstrategic approach to the South. Where previously the North had focused on establishing
\nunderground front organizations in the South, using people like Kim Young Hwan
\nto do its bidding, on this occasion it attempted to
\ninfiltrate an established political party and its Seoul-based structure.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwith the emergence of Lee Seok Ki, who, readers will recall, began as an
\norganizing member of Kim Young Hwan\u2019s Minhyukdang<\/i> at the turn of the century,
\nbut shot to public prominence a decade later as a proportional representation
\ncandidate with the left-wing UPP, or Unified Progressive Party, a coalition of progressive factions of which one is… the old DLP.