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The statue of Kim Il Sung, former leader of North Korea.
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N.K. founder, war heroes honored by trade union members, veteran’s group chair
A conservative group, Freedom Builders, has filed a legal complaint against 50 officials of the Korean Federation of Trade Unions (KFTU) and Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) after members of those umbrella groups visited the tombs of North Korean revolutionary heroes near Pyongyang. This coincided with the revelation that the chairman of the Korea Veterans Association Seoul office paid homage to a statue of Kim Il-sung during a visit to North Korea.
The conservative group said in its complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office that the union members’ visit to the tombs violated South Korea’s National Security Law.
The trade unions participated in an inter-Korean May Day ceremony on May 1 of this year in Pyongyang; it was later revealed that 50 of their memebers paid a visit at that time to the tombs of North Korean revolutionary heroes, several of them leaving offerings of flowers.
In the second incident, Kim Byeong-gwan, the veteran’s group chair, published an account of his October 2002 visit to the North on an Internet site that advocates the politics of the New Right. Kim visited North Korea with followers of the Unification Church.
Kim wrote, "We performed out duty by offering flowers and taking pictures in front of the statue, which has already been deified by North Korean residents. In Rome, do as the Romans do." A number of comments criticizing Kim were posted on the bulletin board of another conservative group’s Internet site. One netizen wrote, "I don’t understand how such a person, who offers flowers in front of a Kim Il-sung statue, could become the leader of a veterans’ association." As the scandal spread, Kim gave an account of his Kim Il-sung homage on the Internet site of the veteran’s association, claiming that he himself did not request a visit to the statue. Regarding the controversies, Professor Kim Geun-sik of Kyungnam University said, "Now, more and more South Koreans are visiting North Korea. Under such circumstances, to criticize a visit to a North Korean ’holy place’ as anti-governmental behavior, as denying the legitimacy of the Republic of Korea, is nothing but an anachronism." To visit North Korean political monuments and symbols of the regime should be seen as merely showing the other side that there is no disrespect, he said.
