[Opinion] Spies and Patriots

“One day, members who went out on a patrol pulled along about 10 reactionaries by force. Among them were old people and women. As usual, a people’s court was held and ideas how to kill them were discussed. Finally, it was decided to kill them by beating them with sticks. It was too wasteful for them to use guns because they wanted to conserve bullets, and too tiresome for them to use bamboo spears or knives because of the bloody stink. On a narrow rice field hill, the slaughter of the reactionaries was carried out...” (An excerpt from the book “An Authentic Record, Jung Soon-duk.”)

“An Authentic Record, Jung Soon-duk” is a book about Jung Soon-Duk, the last partisan who was arrested after fighting in Mt. Jiri in September 1950 for 13 years to achieve the communization of South Korea. Last April, the funeral of dead Mrs. Jung was emblazoned with the slogan: “The National Unification Funeral of A Patriot: Mrs. Jung Soon-duk.”

There were communists paroled as unconverted long-term prisoners who had been partisans and spies sent to the South, and about 150 were members of internal groups out of power. This “partisan woman fighter” who killed our good people by driving them to reactionaries was born again as “a patriot of unification.”

On May 29, a ceremony for completion was held at Bogwang temple in Paju, Gyeonggi Province. The six graves include those of three unconverted long-term prisoners, two spies sent to the South and Mrs. Jung, and a “graveyard for indomitable unification patriots” was created.

A member of a pro-North group out of power said at the ceremony, “I feel ashamed that we are laying our comrades in state in Bogwang temple, which was once occupied by American Imperialism. By all means, we will be laying them in state on our true homeland.”

Kim Jong Il’s system of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is trampling on the basic human rights and the right to live of 23 million North Korean residents. The voice to save them and their human rights is spreading among the world’s civilized countries. However, extreme left-wingers in South Korea who admire the North’s system seem to regard the South as “a territory occupied by America’s imperialism” and the North as “the true mother country.” For them, spies and partisans are patriots.

Now, the Roh Moo-hyun administration is waving the flag of “resolving the past affairs in the Korean politics” while closing its eyes to “the evident treason” that completely denies the national identity of the Republic of Korea. Our patriotic fathers buried in the national cemetery will find it very deplorable.

Song Moon-hong, Editorial Writer, songmh@donga.com