Gov’t Investigates Misuse of Funds It Gave to ‘Civic’ Groups

I’ve previously written about the South Korean government’s provision of $5.2  billion in state funds to 149 different  hippie communes, drum circles,  and commie spy cells “civic” groups, only to have it revealed that some of those groups had a history of organized political violence.  The worst offender was South Korea’s largest labor organization, the ardently pro-North Korean and anti-American Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, and the worst of the violence was over the government’s  costly failure  to negotiate a Free-Trade Agreement with the United States.  Embarrassed by this setback to Korea’s economic future and its strained relations to the United States, members of both of the largest political parties in South Korea’s National Assembly have quietly moved to cut off funds to the violent groups, and a number of local governments are suing the members of the same groups to recover damages caused by their vandalism.

The latest story, which is  disappointing for its absence of detail,  reports that the Korean Ministry of Governmental Administration and Home Affairs is now conducting “a thorough investigation of whether government subsidies provided to civic groups last year were spent according to their original purposes.” 

That could mean a lot of things, including the possibility that the government was intentionally vague at the time it cut the checks,  leaving itself room to roll over on the thugs and cover itself in the event a journalist might write about the story, or even inspire  some pesky blogger to  rat them out to Congress. 

4 Responses

  1. I always wondered how they could afford all those banners, signs, loudspeakers, entertainment, etc. I am in business, so I know all these things cost big dollars.

    I wonder how much government money went to the anti American protests in 2002?

  2. The origins of the funding for the left-wing NGO’s is highly questionable, especially concerning the labor unions, left-wing student organizations and the left-wing teachers’ union.

    I’m sure if the South Korean prosecutors are allowed to dig deeper into their investigation of Democratic Labor Party officials, they’d find something leading north of the DMZ. After all, the guy who organized the founding of the DLP did so under the instruction of a North Korean agent operating in China. That DLP official, who had been working as an “advisor” to the DLP since its founding, was jailed in 2004. After one article appeared about the case in the Monthly Chosun, the prosecutors totally clammed up, and wouldn’t comment on it to anyone, including yours truly.

    The anti-US protests that led up to Roh Moo Hyun’s election were organized AND led by DLP officials. That includes the people standing on stage yelling into the microphones and leading chants and songs. The problem some people may come across in tracking the activities of these NGO’s and the DLP is that their people often belong to belong to two or more organizations. It’s important to trace what the PEOPLE are doing, not necessarily the organizations. If you draw up a big picture with that approach, it’s obvious these NGO’s are very closely linked. And, it wouldn’t be surprising if those funding these tightly-knit NGO’s come from a single source that has access to a number of South Korean left-wingers whose numerous tentacles reach into a multitude of organizations.

    This should be no news for South Korean conservatives, and I’m sure they’re waiting for the next election to go in their favor in order to take some action against the perilous developments in South Korea’s NGO circles that has been enabled mostly due to their legalization under Kim Dae Jung’s presidency.

  3. Mingi, What a superb comment. I wonder if it would be possible to find video of some of the people now under indictment as spies leading some of those protests. I’m sure there’s some way we could cooperate to connect those dots and present them for the readers.

  4. I would drop dead of a heart attack if I were to find out without question money from Pyongyang was not finding its way into the anti-US NGOs’ bank accounts.

    What would be interesting to look for in auditing the books of the South Korean government’s aid to NGOs would be —

    — to find out the names of the handful of top members who run them.

    You always read in the press about these petitions and letters to the USFK commander or US ambassador or US president and so on ——- how they are signed by “the leaders of over 26 civic organizations”

    Or, you hear how this or that protest was put together by a few gazillon civic organizations.

    This is true even when the photo of protest shows that only a dozen or a couple of dozen people showed up – which are usually mostly the same faces you see in EVERY such photo.

    It doesn’t take you long following the anti-US NGO movement in Korea to understand that a small number of people have made a career of establishing a plenthora of anti-US related NGOs. That a a large chunk of the long, long, long list of civic groups that just happen to have a bone to pick with the US in Korea – or the US in general – are led and directed by a small number of Korean citizens.

    So, what I wonder is:

    how many of these NGOs that are NGOs probably on nothing but paper ——- are “organized” for no other purpose than —

    getting a chunk of the government funding?

    How many government checks are being placed in The Priest’s pockets under the names of the many protest groups he affiliates with?

    I bet it would be highly embassing to the South Korean government if they were to allow the list of contributions to get out and some gung-ho researcher was able to track down the names of the people who really run those “groups” on that long list of NGOs…..