Fifth Column Watch

The arrest of Lee Seok-Ki and his merry band of fifth column plotters is also uncovering a lot of the United Progressive Party’s publicly funded rackets:

The ministry cited the Suwon Self-Support Community Center as an example. The center’s job is to support people receiving government welfare; it received 1.7 billion won ($1.6 million) from the city government this year. But this center also urged its clients to join the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) and demanded that workers at the center make donations to the party.

The Joongang Ilbo also publishes the results of a poll, finding that most South Koreans approve of the arrest and interrogation of fifth-columnist Lee Seok-ki, and most approve of disbanding his party (which I don’t, by the way). But of course, arrest by itself by or may not be vindicated by a court’s judgment; it is simply the state’s first use of its power to gather a suspect into the legal process that passes judgment. The disbanding of a party without formal judgment is even harder to endorse. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to ask people whether they favor the vote for Lee’s arrest, or his prosecution?

Besides which, what I really want to know is whether a majority of South Koreans would approve of sentencing Lee (if convicted) to be escorted across the DMZ, permanently.