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South Korea gets impatient over detainees
Seoul (UPI) Aug 10, 2009 South Koreans are getting impatient with their government's lack of success in getting North Korea to release their detained nationals after U.S. reporters were freed. Emotions are rising because communist North Korea remains silent over the fate of South Koreans while making a media show of pardoning the Americans. South Korea's government has nothing but words of patience and people are getting angry over a lack of progress, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported. Last week former U.S. President Bill Clinton made a surprise visit to the North Korean capital Pyongyang on what has been called humanitarian grounds. After a widely publicized meeting and photo shoot with reclusive President Kim Jong Il, the two women journalists were freed. Laura Ling and Euna Lee were serving 12-year sentences of hard labor for illegally entering the country but returned home to an emotional welcome last week. North Korea has been holding a South Korean worker since March. The man, 44 and known only as Yoo, is an employee of Hyundai Asan Corp. He is held on charges of criticizing the North's political system and attempting to persuade a female North Korean worker to defect to the South with him. North Korea is also holding four crewmen of a 29-ton squid-fishing boat, the Yeonan, which they boarded 20 miles into their waters and towed into the port of Jangjon earlier this month. The Yeonan is the third South Korean fishing boat to be seized by North Korea since 2005. The crews and boats have usually been returned weeks or only days after being captured. This initially led South Korean media to expect an early resolution to the fate of the Yeonan and its crew. The families of the crew have been calling publicly for their release. "Please send the crewmen of the Yeonan safely back to the arms of their families. Please help us end this heart-wrenching pain," said the daughter of the Yeonan's captain. She sent her pleas to the North in a letter posted on a Web site because no mail can be delivered to Pyongyang, according to a Yonhap news agency report. Members of South Korea's ruling Grand National Party and those of the main opposition Democratic Party expressed frustration at North Korea's "double standard" toward American and South Korean detainees. It makes a mockery of North Korea's repeated statement of the peninsula being only one Korea, Democratic Party members said. The Grand National Party pointed out that the U.S. reporters met with the Swedish ambassador numerous times during their detention and were permitted to call their families whereas South Korean worker Yoo remains incommunicado. Media point out a hopeful sign of a brief meeting between Hyun Jung-eun, chairwoman of Hyundai Group, Hyundai Asian's parent company, and a high-level North Korean official, Ri Jong-hyok, during a memorial at the North's Mount Kumgang resort last week. No details of the meeting were released by North Korea or Hyundai. A representative for the South Korean government has asked for people to be patient. "The government is making every possible effort to secure the release of the South Korean worker (Yoo) who has been detained incommunicado for 131 days, as well as the four fishermen. "We're fully aware of the public's concern as these incidents could be directly related to our people's lives and safety. Please trust the government and look for future progress." He added that South Korea worked closely with the United States on the release of two U.S. reporters. But a report in the Chosun Ilbo said that Seoul is "still baffled" and "reeling" from Clinton's North Korea trip. The national newspaper quotes a senior government official saying that "the worst-case scenario for us would be to see the repetition of the nightmare of 1994." The South Korean government was "completely left out in the cold," the newspaper said, when the United States and North Korea signed the Geneva Agreed Framework after former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's visit to Pyongyang. Under the deal, South Korea had to bear most of the construction costs for a light-water reactor to be traded for the North's closure of its plutonium-producing nuclear plant in Yongbyon. "It's important for us to maintain close cooperation with the U.S. to prevent us from being left out in the cold as in 1994," the official added. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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NKorea says it was punished unfairly for rocket launchSeoul (AFP) Aug 10, 2009 North Korea insisted Monday it was unfairly punished for its long-range rocket launch in April, noting that South Korea also plans a blast-off this month. The foreign ministry said it would watch closely to see whether world powers would also refer the South's launch to the United Nations Security Council. "Their reaction and attitude towards South Korea's satellite launch will once ... read more |
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