[Previous posts on the Il Shim Hue cell here, here, and here]
A new report, not yet available in English, claims that North Korea used the Fifth Columnists of the “Il Shim Hue” to help the ruling leftist Uri Party in local elections last May. The report, based on leaks from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, claims that North Korea used Il Shim Hue (rough translation: The One-Minded Hundred) to direct the Democratic Labor Party throw its votes and support to the Uri Party to prevent the GNP candidate, Oh Se Hoon, from winning. Oh won, defeating Uri Justice Minister Kang Kum-Sil.
North Korea also directed Il Shim Hue to assemble detailed dossiers on South Korean politics: politicians, civic groups, issues, parties, you name it. One particular issue that concerned them was how South Koreans reacted to North Korea’s recent nuke test. The NIS claims that Il Shim Hue members canvassed popular sentiment about the test throughout South Korean society. Recent polls show a substantial minority (but thankfully, still a minority) blamed America for North Korea’s nuke test, something the ruling party eagerly latched onto.
Another huge shocker: North Korea had plans to infiltrate environmental groups to use them to inspire more anti-American sentiment. You may recall the recent South Korean film, “The Host,“ a monster flick loosely based on a 2000 incident in which a civilian mortician on a U.S. Army post dumped a small amount of highly dilute formaldeyde into the Han River. The incident became a huge story in the South, and “The Host” inspired some icky and unhinged anti-American comments from one ruling party legislator, which neither the legislator nor his party have retracted, to my knowledge.
As represented by USFK’s illegal release of formaldehyde into the Han River, the tragedy on the Korean Peninsula began with the unclean sperm of the United States fertilizing the egg of the Han River. The monster’s outrages and its eating of people shows the similar tyranny displayed by the United States toward the Korean Peninsula.
The NIS says it recovered CD’s and other electronic files, in code, which documented all of this. The files reportedly contained lists of members and logs of their pro-North activities. One of the files, found in a member’s car, would seem to resolve any questions about where the Il Shim Hue’s loyalties lay:
We young warriors celebrate the health of our 21st Century young Great Leader Kim Jong Il, and swear our loyalty to him! Following the example of our Great Leader’s great history, we will follow the North Korean way of socialism and juche and demolish the National Security Law. We will strive to the utmost for them!
All of this is based solely on the NIS side of the story, of course. The possessor of that particular file claims he simply downloaded it off the Internet. The suspects all denied everything before invoking their rights to remain silent. All deny having ever heard of Il Shim Hue. Their lawyers admit that their clients had traveled to China, but deny that they had met Agent Kim or Agent Yu from North Korea’s Foreign Intelligence Service at a safehouse in China, where they allegedly received their training.
Although the report claims that the suspects all denied everything and lawyered up, the lawyers say their clients were forced to incriminate themselves. In fact, the Korean police do use highly coercive methods, but those tend not to work as well against people who obviously had their stories and their legal rights worked out in advance. And trust me on this, as one who has represented hundreds of criminal suspects: multiple accused never all tell the same story and lawyer up unless they have a very well-rehearsed game plan. It’s an exceptionally rare and wise client who lawyers up, and since Korean cops don’t give rights warnings, that’s even more true in Korea.
The real question that this raises: if North Korea can infiltrate the South, why aren’t we infiltrating the North?
