Hereinafter, Democratic Peoples’ Labor Party

What’s a little spy scandal to kill the spirit of Mangyondae?

The Democratic Labor Party’s delegation, led by its chairman Moon Sung-hyun, arrived at Pyongyang on Tuesday.  That day, the South Koreans visited Mangyongdae, the birthplace of Kim Il Sung. However, the Democratic Labor Party made no mention of the stop when it briefed journalists the next day about the delegates’ activities.

Illustrating why it’s hard to be North Korea’s friend, the North Koreans thanked their guests by  replaying the video of them worshipping Satan  right there  on state TV.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new  Democratic Peoples’ Labor Party (Yonhap photo,  apparently a vidcap  from North Korean TV).

Meanwhile, the  prosecutorial leak machine is picking up where the NIS leak machine left off. 

Prosecutors said yesterday that Jang Min-ho, the chief suspect in a continuing espionage investigation, had received a total of $19,000 from North Korean intelligence officials to set up what they called a spy ring. Mr. Jang allegedly received $10,000 during a trip to Pyongyang in 1989 and the remainder at several meetings with North Korean officials in Beijing.

Predictably enough, the suspects are  opting for a  political defense, since reports would suggest that a substantive defense on the merits of the evidence might not work out for them.  Also, these are people who have probably  aspired to become martyred political dissidents all their lives (and what must one do to be arrested during the Roh administration?).  Again, the suspects’ remarkably coordinated and aggressive  reaction to their arrest does not suggest innocence.

Neither Mr. Jang nor the four other suspects now in custody are answering questions by interrogators, and some have started hunger strikes, other prosecutors said yesterday.  Mr. Jang, a Korean-American businessman who prosecutors say has spied for North Korea for a decade, has also refused food, an intelligence service source said.

Right.  People who are trying to subvert and corrupt a Democratic system with violence are political prisoners.   Fetch my  Stradivarius!    I’ll be in my study, overlooking a forlorn seacoast, playing a Samuel Barber adagio. 

Choi Gi-yeong, the deputy secretary general of the Democratic Labor Party, and Lee Jin-gang, a former student activist, also challenged their detention at warrant hearings at the Seoul Central District Court on Saturday. They refused to answer prosecution questions at the hearing, but Mr. Lee said at one point, “The National Security Law is the only law that can be used to detain someone with one-sided testimony and circumstantial evidence. I have no obligation to answer the investigators’ and the prosecutors’ questions.”

Prediction:  the  North Koreans will  try to make an issue of this  in their own domestic propaganda.  The DPLP is already playing the martyrdom card:

The Democratic Labor Party and five people arrested in an ongoing investigation over illegal contact with North Korea sent a petition to prosecutors yesterday, demanding an inquiry against the head of the National Intelligence Service. They claimed Kim Seung-kyu, the head of the intelligence agency who recently said he plans to step down, had labeled the suspects as spies even though the charges had not yet been proven.

By doing so, Mr. Kim violated the nation’s criminal code and the laws governing the National Intelligence Service, according to the political party as well as the suspects’ family members and lawyers.

The Democratic Labor Party also said it plans to seek 100 million won ($106,500) from Mr. Kim for defamation by filing a suit in Seoul Central District Court.

I haven’t read the law, so I’m in no position to address that specific allegation, but it seems that the DPLP has a point here.  The judicial and investigative systems don’t work well when the latest evidentiary discoveries are on Page One.  The problem with that theory is that it only works when  the government  is willing  to protect democracy  with the rule of law.  That requires loosing  state’s engines of justice to pursue the evidence to its limits.  With the Roh Administration, those fundamentals are in doubt.  This government, after all, nudged aside the head of the National Intelligence Service when his agency’s investigation started to embarrass the government, and the outgoing head, Kim Seong-Kew, is warning of a potential coverup.  This is where media leaks  actually help  support a democratic system.  Had there been anything to the whole Valerie Plame issue, I hope I’d be saying the very same thing (although some other  day, we can talk about the applicability of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act).  In any event, the law will soon be buried beneath so much politics,  none of this may  matter.

Separately, a group of eight former student activists held a press conference yesterday and claimed the espionage case is evidence of the North’s strong influence in the South.  They urged the Democratic Labor Party to end its pro-North ideology. They also said pro-North policymakers in the Blue House, Uri Party and the Roh administration should confess their past pro-North activities.

Progressive groups continued to argue that the suspects were victims of a fabricated case. An alliance of 96 such civic groups held a media briefing yesterday in downtown Seoul. The National Intelligence Service conducted “a witch hunt,” they said.

What a perfect example.  Shouting “witch hunt!” does nothing more to address the merits of the evidence than shouting, “witch!”  If you believe that it should be legal to manipulate elections, incite hatred and violence  (in this case, against Americans), and subvert democracy  by turning elected representatives  into covert agents, then just admit it.  That’s the effect of  hitting your  “witch hunt!” macro every time a charge like this is raised, regardless of the strength of the  evidence.  Such a reflexive reaction to charges this serious, even under this most “progressive” of presidencies and in the presence of what appears to be a pretty strong case, suggests a blanket disinterest in the substance of the charges.  Fine, then:  be honest enough to admit that you don’t think that electoral democracy is worth defending. 

The charges, of course, are not proven.  The judicial system, for all its flaws, must take its course.  But it’s really the Il Shim Hue and their defenders who are revealing the most about what they really believe.

Sometimes, where there’s smoke, there is  fire.   Sometimes, there’s  crack.