THE PRO-NORTH KOREAN MOVEMENT IN THE U.S. TODAY (Part 2)

(PART TWO OF A THREE-PART SERIES)

CRYING “PEACE” WHILE EXCUSING TYRANNY AND AGGRESSION 

The pro-North Korean front groups have some well-known and influential members and defenders who may not consider themselves to be pro-North, but who are effectively manipulated and serve as useful “window dressing” or “cover” and are willing to vouch for and defend their organizations.  Whereas some of the openly pro-North groups rely on donations from supporters and previously on commissions from those who applied for North Korean travel visas, the fronts have been able to win grants from foundations and, in some cases, secure wealthy benefactors.  Most pro-North groups are careful to operate, so far as we know, just within the bounds of the law, though there are some which have reportedly been under investigation by federal tax authorities or other U.S. government agencies, and a few Korean-Americans, such as Michael Min-ho Jang and Joung-woong Yai, have been convicted for serving as agents of the North.  Although some of the smaller pro-North groups operate on minimal funds, others with ties to the North Korean regime or successful front groups have substantial financial resources.  One front, Women Cross DMZ, along with two closely allied groups, whose top leaders maintain ties to the North Korean regime and its agents in the U.S., were able to win a $2 million grant from a very left-wing “social justice”-type foundation to lobby against sanctions on the North and in favor of a “no-preconditions” peace treaty between the U.S. and the North, both of which are long standing North Korean goals.  Virtually every pro-North group describes itself as being a “peace” organization, just as almost every pro-North activist describes himself or herself as simply being a “peace” campaigner.  Nevertheless, these groups and individuals have denied, excused, justified, dismissed or ignored the Pyongyang regime’s armed attacks and raids, murders and assassination attempts, terrorist bombings, and various other crimes, including in partiuclar the North’s development of nuclear weapons and its aid to terrorist groups around the world.  Some of these “peace” advocates have even urged or praised violence against Americans, and explicitly or implicitly support the North’s invasion of the South in 1950.  Their definition of “peace” is a very bizarre one indeed, which exposes their dishonesty. Some pro-North groups and activists, such as Women Cross DMZ and Code Pink, have directly participated in staged North Korean propaganda events in Pyongyang, at which the U.S. was viciously condemned as the “kingpin of international terrorism”.

NORTH KOREA’S DIVERSE DEFENDERS 

While there are some 1960s-style, bearded, sandal-wearing pro-North activists among the wide variety of U.S. communist groups, this is still mostly a stereotype.  In the U.S. today, some of those actively affiliated with or otherwise involved to some degree in pro-North groups include feminist leaders, university professors, young students, retired people, Christian and Buddhist clergy, journalists, artists, lawyers, medical doctors, research scientists, unionists, former politicians, bloggers, travel agents, musicians, businessmen, communists, radical leftists, and full-time pro-North activists.  There are pro-North youth groups, feminist groups, study groups, musical groups, think tanks, cultural groups, professional groups, travel agencies, churches, religious groups, coffee shops, websites, voter education and political groups, protest groups, Marxist-Leninist groups, radical left groups, schools, foundations, union groups, academic groups, immigrant advocacy groups, summer camps, and lobbying groups.  Some of these pro-North organizations, such as the 6.15 Implementation Committee, Bomminryun, and the deceptively named Prisoners of Conscience Support Committee, are U.S. branches of groups based in the ROK or elsewhere.  Many exist only within the Korean-American community, and some consist of only a few members, and serve as vehicles for the promotion of the work of individual pro-North activists.  The leaders of pro-North groups which are directly tied to the Pyongyang regime are essentially selected by, and under the control of, intelligence agents based at the North’s U.N Mission in New York City. However, these groups and activists are not very diverse in an ideological sense, since they agree on many issues, such as hatred for the U.S. military and the nation of Israel.

THE MOON, JAE-IN REGIME AND PRO-NORTH FORCES IN THE U.S. 

Since the coming to power in the ROK of the Moon, Jae-in regime in mid-2017, pro-North activists have been given leadership positions in U.S. groups that are affiliated with and controlled by the ROK government, such as the American branches of the National Unification Advisory Council.  Also since mid-2017, under Moon’s rule, some ROK consulates in the U.S. have co-sponsored events with pro-North groups, and ROK diplomatic personnel in the U.S. have attended pro-North events and even met with the most notorious and hardcore pro-North and anti-American leaders.  Such practices would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.  Whereas some of the more fanatical and well-known pro-North activists who have had ties to the North Korean regime and its agents overseas had been denied entry into the ROK from roughly 2006 through early 2017, beginning in mid-2017, thanks to Moon, several such activists including some from groups such as Nodutdol and the 6.15 Implementation Committee, who are openly pro-North and maintain ties to the North Korean regime, have been allowed to visit the ROK.  Conversely, over the past several years and up to the present, ROK politicians including some from Moon’s Democratic Party and other minor left-wing parties which were in opposition from about 2006 to 2017, have on their visits to the U.S. met with pro-North activists, including some of the most hardcore variety, as well as with North Korean intelligence agents, and they have spoken at meetings sponsored or organized by pro-North groups and activists, apparently thinking that no one back in Seoul would know or care.  The lobbying efforts in opposition to sanctions on the North, by pro-Moon groups such as the Korean American Public Action Committee, now mesh seamlessly with the lobbying of pro-North groups.  Pro-Moon and pro-North groups here have essentially become partners in their lobbying and allies in terms of some key positions.  The Moon regime seems to be encouraging this trend, and has not been ashamed of collaborating with openly anti-American extremists here.

INFORMATION WARS AND THE MEDIA 

Media outlets directly operated or funded and affiliated with the ROK government have invited to Seoul a pro-North Korean writer for the far-left The Nation magazine in the U.S., who has been involved with several pro-North groups, in order to expound on how he fully supports the policies of Moon and his party.  Other pro-North activists, including the top leaders of some pro-North groups, have been invited to participate in various conferences and other events organized or sponsored by the ROK government, provincial governments, government-affiliated or pro-Moon entities.  For many years, pro-North activists have had little or no access to U.S. “mainstream” media, but in recent years they have been increasingly able to make their voices heard in national print and broadcast media, thanks to the efforts of their influential supporters, the use of sophisticated media relations techniques in which some pro-North leaders have been trained, and even by hiring a “media access” consulting firm. Unfortunately, some foreign correspondents based in Seoul or in neighboring countries who cover the ROK, while not pro-North themselves, are either ignorant of the U.S. pro-North movement or are personally friendly with and even sympathetic to some views of pro-North activists.  Some foreign academics working in Korea are also sympathetic to and even supportive of U.S. pro-North activists and groups.  There are U.S. pro-North activists, who were active members of pro-North groups here, who are currently working in Seoul, including one in a position of significant responsibility at a major left-wing transport workers union.   

INTENTIONAL AND UNINTENTIONAL SPREAD OF MISINFORMATION

All of these factors have led to some misinformation and downright lies being disseminated within the ROK and the U.S. about the nature and scope of the U.S. pro-North movement, with some foreign academics and journalists in Seoul, due to their own ignorance and disinterest in the topic, even denying its existence.  The Hankyoreh, a left-wing, anti-U.S. daily newspaper in the ROK, had a pro-North Korean activist as a Los Angeles correspondent, who was violating the most basic rules of professional journalism by reporting on pro-North protests in which he was actively participating, and in some cases even leading.  A pro-North writer and self-described Marxist in the Washington, D.C. area, who managed to get an exclusive interview with Moon, Jae-in just days before the 2017 ROK presidential election and who violates fundamental standards of journalistic ethics by failing to disclose that he is affiliated with pro-North groups about which he writes and by actively participating in pro-North political protests and speaking at political party conferences, has been attempting to silence critics of the pro-North movement and the Moon regime in the U.S.  He has also called for his fellow American leftist radicals to employ “candlelight revolution”-style mass protests of the type which resulted in the ousting of President Park, Geun-hye, in order to similarly overthrow the American system of government.  When the controversy regarding the California-based pro-North activist Shin, Eun-mi emerged during her visit to the ROK, some Seoul-based reporters from major U.S. and international news media outlets misleadingly and uncritically repeated Shin’s demonstrably false claims, while ignoring the ample evidence of her strong support for Kim, Jong-un’s regime and its policies.  The media clearly need to do a much better job of covering pro-North forces in the U.S., and a key step in that process must necessarily be a frank recognition of the existence of the pro-North movement and its intrinsic nature, and an avoidance of pro-Moon bias.