Protestant clergyman convicted for visiting North korea
Seoul (AsiaNews/ Agencies) – A Christian clergyman from South Korea was sentenced to five years in prison for travelling North Korea and staying there for two months without authorisation. South Korean law bans and severely punishes unauthorised visits to the North.
Rev Han Sang-ryol was also convicted because his visit came at a time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas over the sinking of ROKN Cheonan.
The incident left 46 south Korean sailors dead, killed when North Korea fired a missile that sank the corvette as it sailed near North Korea’s territorial waters.
A diplomatic crisis followed that brought the peninsula close to another civil war.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak warned pro-unification activists that they would suffer serious consequences if they engaged in propaganda.
Rev Han is a well-known pro-unification activist and supporter of the ‘sunshine policy’, South Korea’s policy of rapprochement with the North, which began in the 1990s but was abandoned by the current administration.
Prosecutors had demanded a ten-year jail term. In its ruling, the court said, “The defendant went to the North without the Unification Ministry's approval,” and “he would have been aware that his activities would be extensively reported by the North's media for the regime's propaganda”.
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