Activist criticizes SKorea’s conservative president over deadly warship sinking
By APTuesday, June 22, 2010
Activist blames SKorea’s leader for ship sinking
PYONGYANG, North Korea — A South Korean activist on an unauthorized trip to North Korea on Tuesday blamed his country’s conservative president — not the communist North — for the deadly sinking of one of Seoul’s warships.
Rev. Han Sang-ryol is a member of a small-but-vocal minority of South Korean activists and religious groups who are sympathetic to North Korea and call for unification of the two countries. North Korea has embraced Han’s visit, which began June 12, according to the country’s state media.
Seoul, however, has said that Han did not have permission to travel to the northern neighbor and that the government will handle his case according to a law that can put him in prison for up to three years.
Han, who works for Seoul-based Korea Alliance Progressive Movements, gave a rare news conference Tuesday in Pyongyang, criticizing South Korean President Lee Myung-bak for allegedly discarding past rapprochement accords with North Korea and raising tension by staging joint military exercises with the United States.
Lee has taken a harder line on North Korea than his liberal predecessor, linking aid to North Korea’s denuclearization, and relations between the two Koreas have worsened as a result.
“One thing is clear, that Lee Myung-bak is to blame for the incident,” Han said, according to video footage from APTN in Pyongyang, referring to the sinking of the Cheonan warship, which South Korea says sank due to a North Korean torpedo attack in March, killing 46 sailors.
Seoul has blamed the North for the sinking and asked the U.N. Security Council to punish it.
Tensions on the peninsula have since reached new heights, with Pyongyang saying any attempt to punish it would trigger a nuclear war.
The two Koreas are technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
