Song Du-yul

Song Du-yul (born 1944 in Tokyo, Japan from Korean parents) is a professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Münster in Munster, Germany. Educated in South Korea, he left that nation for Germany in 1967 to pursue higher education. He visited North Korea a total of 18 times while living in Germany, but did not return to the South until 2003. During his visit to the South that year, he was arrested, charged, and convicted of spying for the North under the South's National Security Act in a controversial court case; in the end, he was given a suspended sentence, and returned to Germany in August 2004.cite journal|title=Democracy and National Security in South Korea: The Song Du Yol Affair|last=Kajimura|first=Tai'ichiro|journal=Japan Focus|date=2004-12-10|accessdate=2007-07-13|issn=1557-4660|url=http://japanfocus.org/products/details/1585]

Early life

Song underwent primary and secondary education in Gwangju before moving to Seoul to enter Seoul National University's Department of Philosophy. In 1967, he moved to West Germany, where he entered into a graduate programme at Heidelberg University. He later studied at Frankfurt University, where he wrote his thesis on "The Understanding of Asia in Hegel, Marx, and Weber." Jürgen Habermas acted as his thesis advisor; he was also heavily influenced by the ideas of Peter Christian Ludz. He completed his doctoral studies in 1972, following which he took up a teaching post at the Free University of Berlin.

Contact with North Korea

Song made his first visit to North Korea in 1973. His desire to see the North first-hand was heavily driven the political environment at the time in West Germany, where "Ostpolitik", the official policy of engagement with East Germany, was gaining traction. According to his own statements, he became a member of the North's ruling party, the Workers' Party of Korea, at that time; he claimed that this was a requirement for entering North Korea in those days. He would visit North Korea 18 more times in the following years. Though he did not travel to the South at all during this time, he continued to pay attention to political events in his homeland; he organised large-scale protests in Berlin in 1980 over the violent suppression of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, which culminated in a 1500-person march down the Kurfürstendamm, a main avenue in Berlin. In 1982, he began teaching at the University of Münster. He met Kim Il-sung personally in 1991; in 1994, he was the only South Korean to attend Kim's funeral (though he had already taken up German citizenship the previous year).cite news|date=2003-09-29|accessdate=2007-07-13|title=The Man with Two Names|last=MacIntyre|first=Donald|publisher=Time Magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,501031006-490731,00.html]

Song attempted to make arrangements to travel to South Korea in May 2000 to attend memorial events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Gwangju uprising. According to the North Korean-affiliated Zainichi Korean newspaper "Choson Sinbo", he refused conditions placed on him by the South Korean National Intelligence Service, which included a demand that he make a written pledge to respect South Korean law; as a result, his plans to attend the memorial collapsed.cite news|publisher=Choson Sinbo|date=2000-07-12|accessdate=2007-07-12|title=무산된 33년만의 귀국 (Chance to return home after 33 years vanishes)|url=http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/korea/sinbok/sinbok-2000/sinbok007/sinbok000712/sinbok00071225.htm] In 2001, North Korean defector Hwang Jang-yop asserted that Song was actually a member of the Workers' Party of Korea's Politburo under the alias Kim Chol-su. In response, Song initiated a lawsuit against Hwang in the Seoul 16th District Court, alleging that Hwang's statements constituted libel. Song did not return to the South for this case; his lawyer An Sang-un appeared in court on his behalf. A court ruling in August 2001 recognised that Hwang's statement had no basis in fact, but denied Song's request for payment of damages; the following month, Song announced that he would not appeal the ruling, as he was satisfied with the court's affirmation that he was not Kim Chol-su. [cite news|publisher=The Chosun Ilbo|date=2001-09-19|accessdate=2007-07-16|title=송두율교수, 황장엽씨 상대 항소포기 (Professor Song Du-yul will not pursue suit against Hwang Jang-yop)|url=http://nk.chosun.com/news/news.html?ACT=detail&page=1&res_id=10872]

Return to South Korea and trial

Song finally returned to South Korea in September 2003 for the first time in 37 years at the invitation of the Korea Democracy Foundation; his itinerary was to include a meeting with then-President Roh Moo-hyun. However, upon his arrival, the National Intelligence Service immediately picked him up for interrogation; they accused him of being a spy for North Korea, pointing to Hwang's claim that he was actually Kim Chol-su as justification. Despite the fact that Song was a German citizen, the German Foreign Office agreed to treat the affair as an internal South Korean matter, and offered no official protest about his case; this contrasted sharply with their response to the 1972 Isang Yun case. [cite web|url=http://www.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200310/200310030224.html|date=2003-10-03|last=Gwon|first=Gyeong-bok|publisher=The Chosun Ilbo|title=독일정부 "宋씨 문제는 한국 국내문제" (German government: "Mr. Song's case is a domestic problem for South Korea")] South Korean police arrested Song on 3 October; he was indicted on 15 November on charges of membership in an anti-state organisation, fleeing to a region under control of an anti-state organisation, aiding an anti-state organisation, and attempted fraud in relation to his libel suit against Hwang.

Pyongyang initially refrained from comment on the trial, sparking speculation that Song had cut his ties with the North; however, the official Korean Central News Agency eventually came out with harsh criticisms of the trial in 2004, calling the Grand National Party "traitors to the nation" for taking the lead in the legal action against Song and accusing the South of violating the June 15th Joint Declaration by charging him under the National Security Act. [cite news|url=http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/202nd_issue/2004032706.htm|title=S. Korean Prosecution Proposes 15-Year Prison Term for Korean-German Scholar on Spying for North|date=2004-03-27|accessdate=2007-07-13|publisher=The People's Korea] [cite news|date=2003-10-09|accessdate=2007-07-13|title=Pyongyang Watch: Freedom fighter or traitor|last=Foster-Carter|first=Aidan|publisher=Asia Times|url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/EJ09Dg02.html] He was convicted on 30 April 2004 and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment in a ruling which drew criticism from Amnesty International. [cite web|title=Open letter to Acting President Goh Kun — Continued use of the draconian National Security Law: Amnesty International's concerns about Professor Song Du-yul's case|publisher=Amnesty International|date=2004-04-30|accessdate=2007-07-13|last=Khan|first=Irene|url=http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engasa250032004] Song appealed the sentence; the appeal court ruling on 21 July upheld two of the five initial counts, those for spying and fraud; his sentence was suspended for five years, and he was permitted to leave the country. After a visit to Gwangju, he departed for Germany on 5 August 2004; the German government had him upgraded to first-class on Lufthansa at their expense.

Works

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* Dissertation: cite book|language=German|last=Song|first=Du-yul|title=Die Bedeutung der asiatischen Welt bei Hegel, Marx und Max Weber|location=Frankfurt/Main|publisher=Frankfurt University|date=1972|id=

ee also

* Koreans in Germany

References