The Marmot’s Hole

Finally, Seoul is ignoring officials visiting shrines dedicated to war criminals who have inflicted untold suffering on the Korean people.

Unfortunately, the shrines in question are in North Korea, and the officials are from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).

According to the Chosun Ilbo, the leadership of the KCTU visited all three of North Korea’s “revolutionary holy spots” during a visit in August 1999, despite South Korea’s National Security Law banning visits to such shrines.*

The KCTU delegation even paid their respects at Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where the body of late North Korean leader Kim Il-sung is interred.

They also visited Kim Il-sung birthplace at Mangyongdae and the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery and Patriotic Martyrs’ Cemetery.

Then-Prime Minister Kim Jong-pil threatened to take legal action against the unionists, but no such action was ever taken.

A Democratic Labor Party delegation visited the Patriotic Martyrs’ Cemetery in August 2005. No legal action was taken then, either.

Finally, another delegation—this time composed of the KCTU and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU)—visited the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery in May. The authorities are reportedly considering legal action against the offending unionists, but we’ll have to wait and see—for starters, they want to determine whether the supposed visit was “passive or active,” and whether they intended to praise North Korea. KCTU unification committee chairman Jin Kyung-ho, however, didn’t see what the big stink was about:

The KCTU unification committee chairman said the union leaders “paid the visit to the cemetery since North Korea kept asking us to do so. And we concluded that the visit would not be problematic because the cemetery honors not only communist revolutionary martyrs (emphasis mine) but also those who fought against Japan’s colonial rule. I don’t understand why the visit is causing such a controversy.” Jin added the government’s ban on visits to the cemetery is vague, inconsistent and arbitrary.

Koizumi Junichiro and the “Yasukuni memorializes not only war criminals…” crowd would be proud. All in all, however, I have no arguments with Mr. Jin’s characterization of the government’s ban on visits to the cemetery as vague and inconsistent.

* The Chosun cited as its source the KCNA. Take from that what you like, but the fact that Kim Jong-pil threatened legal action probably probably indicates that the union did, in fact, do what the KCNA said it did.