Song Du-yul - Return To South Korea and Trial

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. 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. At his trial, the witnesses against him included a number of South Korean scholars in Germany whom he had allegedly influenced to engage in pro-North activism, including Oh Kil-nam, who had defected to North Korea but then returned to the South.

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. He was convicted on 30 April 2004 and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment in a ruling which drew criticism from Amnesty International. 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.