President blasts pro-N. Korea groups

President Lee Myung-bak lashed out at pro-North Korean groups in the South that blindly support the Pyongyang regime, Monday, saying that “North Korean followers are “worse than North Korea.”

Lee’s remarks come at a time when the public is showing tiredness about the way so-called pro-Pyongyang leftists are behaving, especially in connection with an internal dispute in the minor opposition Unified Progressive Party (UPP).

It remains to be seen how Lee’s remarks will be reflected in policies ranging from prosecutors, who served as key tools in conducting ideological purges, to his stance on North Korea, already seen as being quite hard by the standards of the two previous liberal regimes.

“The North has repeatedly made wild assertions, but what matters more are some pro-North Korea groups within our society,” he said in a biweekly radio address.

Lee noted that the Pyongyang still insists that Seoul fabricated evidence implicating it in a bomb attack in Yangon that killed 17 South Korean officials in October 1983; and the torpedoing of the warship Cheonan that took the lives of 46 sailors onboard in March 2010.

He urged North Korean sympathizers to wake up to reality instead of unconditionally accepting absurd claims by the communist regime that continues to deny responsibility for vicious attacks against South Koreans.

Observers say that Lee, who has refrained from making ideological remarks, took on the issue of communist sympathizers in the South on the back of a growing public uproar against far-left pro-North Korean figures of the UPP.

“What wrong did they do and to whom? They were the victims of the division of the country and a ruthless terrorist attack,” Lee said as he described his visit to a Yangon mausoleum where a bomb planted by North Korean agents killed Deputy Prime Minister Seo Seok-jun and other Cabinet members.

“I could not hold back my anger thinking about who took their lives. I felt all choked up.”

On Saturday, lawyer Jun Won-tchack argued in a live television broadcast that one should be able to say the late North Korean leader Kim Jon-il and his heir Jong-un are “sons of a bitch” in order to prove that they are not delusional followers of the Stalinist North.

Despite some controversy over his use of vulgar words, Jun’s hawkish remarks surprisingly drew a lot of positive reactions from netizens, reflecting the public’s strong disapproval of “blind followers” of the North.

“Who should be described as sons of bitches, if not the ones responsible for a war that killed 2.5 million brethren and starved 3.5 million North Koreans,” a netizen identified as Lee Sang-woong said.

Criticism of pro-North Korean groups has risen sharply over the past few months since UPP lawmakers-elect embroiled in a vote-rigging scandal repeatedly refused to criticize the wrongdoings of the North during their public appearances.

Some political pundits say Lee’s usually strong remarks against them are intended to give a boost to his conservative ruling Saenuri Party and its presidential hopeful Park Geun-hye.

With the support of the Saenuri Party and Park, the Lee administration has taken a hardline stance toward the North since it took office in 2008 while downplaying the achievements of the previous two liberal administrations’ engagement policy.

They say escalating criticism of North Korea sympathizers and pro-North Korean politicians will be a boon for the Saenuri Party ahead of the December presidential election. <Korea Times/Lee Tae-hoon>

news@theasian.asia