hankyoreh

By Jang Hwan-bong, staff reporter
“The great General is using his magical method of covering great expanses in short time,” “The great Leader is a symbol of the fate of our country and nation, and all happiness.”
University student Kim Jeong-do, 21, thought that such comments posted on the Twitter account, “Uriminzokkiri” run by North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea were funny, so he retweeted them to his Twitter followers. He sometimes posted North Korea’s harsh criticism of the Lee Myung-bak administration. “I thought it was funny for them to post such remarks as propaganda,” he explained. He never imagined retweeting the remarks to lampoon the North Korean regime would cause him to become the subject of an investigation by the national security branch of the National Police Agency.
On Oct. 23, National Security Investigation Unit 3 of the National Police Agency summoned Kim to a branch located in Seoul’s Hongjae neighborhood. The police had detailed documentation of Kim’s email transactions and Twitter postings over the last three years.
The grounds taken by the police for Kim’s violation of the National Security Law by praising North Korea consisted of 50 items out of 28,000 that Kim posted on his Twitter feed since May 2010. The police asked, “You did this even knowing that materials aiding the enemy put the order of the current government in danger?” Kim thought of responding, “I never imagined that jokes could endanger the rule of the current government”, but instead he said, “No, I did not”.
In an Oct. 24 interview with the Hankyoreh, Kim said, “Police officers repeated the same questions again and again: ‘Who invaded who in the Korean War?’, ‘Do you donate to the New Progressive Party?’, ‘Why did you post messages of support for the strikes at Hyundai Motor?’”
This is the third case in which people were investigated for retweeting postings by “Uriminzokkiri”. In January, Park Jeong-geun, 24, was arrested on the same charge as Kim. Park retweeted “Uriminzokkiri” and posted writings like “A Twitterian who loves Kim Jong-il,” and “I’ll die if the party asks me to.” Park also explained he retweeted such writings as ridicule. Park, who is now waiting for the court to rule on his sentence after release on bail in February, said, “I cannot help but see the police investigation as farfetched police work aimed at increasing their policing statistics as Twitter is so easy to monitor.”
Kwon Yong-seok, 20, who retweeted 200 “Uriminzokkiri” postings, also was subjected to search and seizure at 7:30 a.m. on April 26 while he was sleeping at his house in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province. After that, he was investigated eight times at a national security branch office located in Seoul’s Shinjeong neighborhood.
Kwon’s Twitter account, brought into question by police, showed jokes parodying “Uriminzokkiri” (meaning “just among our nation”) as “Urigwailkkiri” (meaning “just among our fruit”) and wrote, “Strike with iron mace our fruit’s sworn enemy, the American imperialist Orange and the reactionary fruit juices supporting them.” Dismissing this joke, the police are only taking issue with the conduct of retweeting “Uriminzokkiri” quotes directly. Kwon said, “I feel like there is no freedom to make jokes in Korea.”
All three of them are members of the New Progressive Party and critical of the North Korean regime. They met at the protests against the forced demolition of Cafe Mari in the redevelopment area of Myeongdong, Seoul last July, and they retweeted “Uriminzokkiri” whenever they were bored. They described posting those tweets in a bit of friendly competition to see who could do more to ridicule the closed and undemocratic system of the North.
The Youth Student Committee of the New Progressive Party held a press conference on Oct. 25 in front of the New Frontier Party headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul, stating that, “The authorities of public security went overboard by investigating those who satirize and ridicule the North Korean regime,” and asked each presidential candidate’s camp to reveal by Nov. 2 their opinions on whether the National Security Law should be maintained or abandoned.
　
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