hankyoreh

By Park Byung-su and Kim Kyu-won, staff reporters

North Korea is threatening to make public statements made by possible presidential candidates from South Korea’s New Frontier Party while visiting North Korea years ago. Pyongyang claimed on June 11 that prominent conservative politicians such as Park Geun-hye, Chung Mong-joon and Kim Moon-soo made friendly gestures that are at odds with their tough stances on the North.

The North has always brought up contentious political issues and criticized conservatives in the South before elections, but has never before threatened to reveal what visitors said or did while in North Korea.

The North’s statement was made as part of its protests that the controversy currently raging in the South over allegedly pro-North figures in the National Assembly was “killing North Korea.” It was delivered as a written statement from the secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, a body in the North that deals with the South.

There have been cases of South Korean conservatives normally critical of the North saying positive things or giving presents when visiting. In October 1998, a team of reporters from the Donga Ilbo newspaper went to the North and presented a gilt-bronze copy of one of its early articles [pre-dating national division] that reported on the “Battle of Bocheonbo,” part of premier Kim Il-sung’s anti-Japanese struggle. The Battle of Bocheonbo occurred when Kim Il-sung’s unit of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army entered Korea in June 1937 and occupied a village in Bocheonbo, South Hamgyeong province. This battle played a decisive role in making Kim Il-sung famous throughout the Korean peninsula.

Joongang Ilbo newspaper chairman Hong Seok-hyeon, is also known to have given an expensive watch as a present to Kim Jong-il in September 1998. In August 2000, when a large number of media company CEOs from the South visited the North, the August 2000 issue of North Korean monthly magazine “Geumsugangsan” reported that the head of one conservative media company had strongly praised Kim Jong-il, calling him “magnanimous” and “a real person,” and saying that he would “decidedly be number one, wherever he [went] in the world.” Presents given to Kim Jong-il by figures visiting the North are known to be displayed at the International Friendship Exhibition Hall at Mt. Myohyang.

When visiting North Korea in May 2002, Park Geun-hye met Kim Jong-il, but it is not precisely known what else she did. In 2006, the opposition party claimed that she had visited Kim Il-sung’s birthplace at Mangyeongdae, but Park explained that she went to Mangyongdae Children’s Palace rather than Kim‘s birthplace.

Lawmaker Chong Mong-joon has made two visits to Pyongyang: one in 1999 and one in 2000. Gyeonggi-do governor Kim Moon-soo visited North Korea in 2008.

“When you visit someone else’s country it’s common sense to express respect for that country’s leader and to give presents,” said Yang Moo Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies. “South Korea’s irrational pro-North Korea controversy is spreading to become a time-wasting argument over statements and gifts made [by South Koreans] when visiting the North.”

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