McCarthyism! Moon Jae-In’s government declares Christine Ahn persona non grata

Is it possible to be too far-left for Moon Jae-In? In the end, I suspect not, but still:

An American who helped arrange for 30 female peace activists to cross the heavily armed border between North and South Korea in 2015 has been denied entry to South Korea, officials confirmed on Monday.

Christine Ahn, a South Korean-born American citizen, said she did not know she was persona non grata in the country until Asiana Airlines stopped her from boarding a flight at the San Francisco airport on Thursday. She had planned to transit through Incheon International Airport outside Seoul on her way to China, where she intended to spend a week before visiting South Korea.

After being told she was not allowed to transit though South Korea, she bought a new ticket to fly directly to Shanghai, she said.

The Justice Ministry of South Korea said on Monday that Ms. Ahn had been denied entry because there were sufficient grounds to fear that she might “hurt the national interests and public safety” of South Korea.

Ms. Ahn said she suspected that the government of the former president Park Geun-hye, a conservative who was impeached over a corruption scandal and removed from office in March, had put her on a blacklist for helping organize the Women Cross DMZ campaign in May 2015. [NY Times]

Since the question has been raised by those who invent facts with the promiscuity of Larry Craig on a five-hour layover in Bangkok with a new pair of Salvatore Ferragamo oxfords, no, this decision had nothing to do with me, at least as far as I know. For that matter, I don’t know who in his right mind (and this may be the determinative premise) would ever suspect me of having any influence in Moon Jae-In’s administration.

But at least the South Korean government, unlike the New York Times, is willing to go beyond Ahn’s self-serving claims of “peace” activism to investigate her actual views. Her 2015 Women Cross DMZ march through Pyongyang and points south was arranged in collaboration with a North Korean diplomat. Stage-management of the event was then handed off to the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, which handed the participants very nearly the same banners used by the Korean Friendship Association and every other useful idiot who marches through Pyongyang. 

In the end, the trip was a case of life imitating parody — a public relations disaster whose nadir was the Rodong Sinmun’s quotation of Ahn as saying that Kim Il Sung had devoted his life to the liberation of the North Korean people, with Gloria Steinem and others left to deny the statement as Ahn ducked the press.

As I documented a dozen years ago when the shoe (ahem) was on the other foot, South Korea has a long-standing practice of excluding or expelling foreigners whose purpose for visiting is to engage in political activity. And while I’m admittedly sympathetic to Vollertsen’s views and unsympathetic to Ahn’s, I’m hard-pressed to say that any government is obligated to admit any alien to engage in political activity, regardless of his or her political views.

If my memory serves me, the South Korean government later relented and let Vollertsen back in. I expect the Moon administration will probably also relent when Ahn’s hard-left friends raise a ruckus. After all, I can’t objectively say that Ahn is any more extreme than Tim Shorrock, to whom President Moon granted one of his first interviews, and her contents don’t seem to be red-lining the pressure valve quite like a man so militant that in the end, not even Ralph Nader could stand him.