A South Korea-born professor who returned home last year after 37 years in exile in Germany was jailed for seven years yesterday for working for communist North Korea, a court official said.
Song Du-yul, a sociologist who is now a German citizen, was ruled to have engaged in pro-Pyongyang activities and to have been a ranking member of North Korea's ruling Workers Party.
"Song was sentenced to seven years in prison for working as a member of North Korea's Workers Party," said an official of Seoul's Central District Court. Judges said he was an alternative member of the party's politburo, the official said by telephone.
Intelligence officials said Song had visited the North at least 18 times between 1973 and 2003 and received instructions from Pyongyang.
Song was jailed for violations of the National Security Law, which prohibits a wide range of pro-communist activities. The trips and his membership in the North's ruling party -- formally an anti-state organization in the south -- broke the law.
Song's son, Song Rinn, said his father would appeal.
The case has highlighted lingering ideological fault-lines in South Korea and shown that laws and policies from the Cold War conflict remain in place in both Koreas despite efforts at reconciliation over the past several years.
Song, 59, was feted by the South Korean left as a democracy activist when he came home last year because he had opposed military governments that ruled the South from the 1960s to the 1980s. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and members of his Cabinet had urged lenient treatment for Song.
But conservatives attacked him for his large body of writings admiring and defending North Korean founder Kim Il-sung and Kim's son and successor, Kim Jong-il. The North's ruling party remains officially dedicated to imposing communist rule in the South.
Portions of the court ruling published by Yonhap news agency said that "a heavy penalty is required for causing a negative impact on peaceful Korean unification through the propagation in South Korea of the ideologies of Kim Il-sung and his son."
Song was arrested in October and had denied most of the allegations made against him. State prosecutors had demanded a 15-year sentence.
There was no immediate comment from the German embassy in Seoul.
Based on statements from a high-level defector from the North, Seoul's National Intelligence Service said Song was known in the North as Kim Chul-soo, a name listed as the 23rd highest member of the North's Politburo. The court ruled those statements stood as evidence.
A professor of sociology, Song graduated from the prestigious Seoul National University in 1967 and flew to Germany to study in Heidelberg and Frankfurt. Prominent German intellectuals had appealed to Seoul to be lenient on Song.
The two Koreas, divided at the end of World War II, were bitter ideological rivals for most of the five decades since the 1950 to 1953 Korean conflict ended in a truce, not in a peace treaty.
Seoul began softening its stance toward Pyongyang in 2000, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to the North through aid and investments in tourism. Thousands of South Koreans visit the North each year for tourism, academic exchange and business.
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