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Choi Sung-yong, president of the Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea, was sent to prison on Wednesday. He had been given a W500,000 (US$1=W1,153) fine last June for obstructing official business by demonstrating in front of a hotel where inter-Korean ministerial talks were being held, demanding the return of South Korean prisoners of war in North Korea and South Korean nationals kidnapped by the communist country. Instead of paying the fine, Choi opted to take nine days of hard labor. He went to jail not because he could not afford to pay the W500,000 fine, but to highlight the error in the government¡¯s policy on South Koreans languishing in the North.
Choi is the son of a South Korean fisherman kidnapped by North Koreans. He dedicated his life to the release of South Korean kidnap victims after seeing his mother cry out for the return of her husband in 1992 while Lee In-mo, a North Korean long-term prisoner, was sent back to the North. He personally brought back six South Korean abduction victims from North Korea. In October 2005, North Korea is said to have ordered Choi¡¯s elimination.
Choi was charged by the Unification Ministry with obstruction of official business again last August. The reason was that Choi obstructed a hearing unilaterally organized by the ministry to discuss measures to compensate the families of South Koreans abducted by North Korea.
The government has not secured the release of a single South Korean abduction victim. Choi had been doing what his government should have done. He quit his job and is using his own money for his efforts. If the government had not ignored its duty to win the release of the victims, there would have been no need for Choi to sacrifice himself for this cause, risking his life in the process. And there would be no reason for him to demonstrate, trying to draw the government¡¯s attention on the issue.
When former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi visited North Korea in 2004, he personally won the release of five kidnap victims. The gate to Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) of the U.S. bears the phrase ¡°Until They Are Home.¡± But when South Korean fisherman Lee Jae-keun, rescued with the help of Choi back in 2000, called a South Korean consulate in Qingdao, an official there told him to find his own way to the South, since he paid no taxes and should not be asking for help. In 2007, another South Korean fisherman, Choi Wook-il, also rescued by Choi, called the South Korean consulate in Shenyang. There he was rebuked by an official at the consulate and quizzed about how he had gotten the number. They have some nerve talking like that, charging others with obstructing official duties. Now they have sent a man to jail for doing their job for them.
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