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Fifty-odd members of the nation's two trade union umbrellas, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, visited the Revolutionary Martyrs¡¯ Cemetery on Mt. Taesong in Pyongyang while attending May Day events there. Four of them including KCTU unification committee chairman Jin Kyung-ho reportedly also laid floral tributes and bowed there.
The Revolutionary Martyrs¡¯ Cemetery, built in 1975, holds the graves of 140 members of the so-called "first generation of the revolution," among them Kim Jong-suk, mother of Kim Jong-il, and Kim Chaek. Along with the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where Kim Il-sung¡¯s embalmed corpse is displayed, and the Patriots Cemetery, it is one of the three major ¡°sacred revolutionary shrines.¡± Before the group's departure for Pyongyang, the government reportedly told them South Korea bans trips to the cemetery and accompanying government official also warned them if they went, they could be in breach of the National Security Law. But KCTU members ignored the instructions, saying this is a different era.
On May 2, while the KCTU group was visiting Pyongyang, the umbrella¡¯s secretary general told a rally against a new U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek, "On May Day, workers from the two Koreas resolved to conduct their anti-American struggle in unison." In December last year, the KCTU issued a statement calling for an ¡°immediate suspension¡± of an international rally on North Korea¡¯s human rights record in Seoul. Leave the North alone, they said, it is improving things on its own.
If the KCTU values the North's efforts to improve human rights so highly, its leaders should go and live there with their families. North Koreans are fleeing as far afield as Mongolia, Vietnam and Thailand to escape from hunger and oppression, and risk their lives crossing the Yalu and Tumen Rivers and evading the watchful eyes of Chinese police. The KCTU members are behaving like other sloppy progressives in the South, with the North Koreans held hostage for their benefit. These are people without a conscience.
The Unification Ministry on July 5 banned 14 of the KCTU and KFTU members from visiting North Korea -- for a month. Even that nominal procedure, which came two months late, it tried to conceal from North Korea. Come July 19, the ministry gave the two umbrella unions W69.39 million ($1=W965) in subsidies for their North Korea tours. There is a lesson in that: kowtowing at North Koreas revolutionary shrines pays.
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