As US investigators hunkered down last week to investigate whether US President Donald Trump’s election campaign colluded with a hostile government, South Korea’s new president was appointing a right-hand man about whom there could be no doubt. Im Jong-seok served a prison term for behavior that a court considered aiding his country’s main enemy, North Korea. Im was convicted and sentenced in 1989 after arranging an illegal visit to Pyongyang by a fellow leftist activist, a visit that North Korea’s regime milked for propaganda advantage.
And now he’s chief of staff to President Moon Jae-in. There seems to be little surprise in Seoul about the appointment of Im, who’s now 51. After all, Moon is a former militant anti-government activist.
Later, he was a close supporter of two earlier presidents’ decade-long pursuit of the “Sunshine” policy of making nice to the North in the hope the two could negotiate their differences. Moon has since his election sought to downplay his differences with US policy toward North Korea. So the suggestion that Im’s appointment sounds like an appalling development is left to just a few observers.
Those include the conservative Liberty Korea Party, which expressed “regret” and said the move intensifies concerns about Moon’s own position toward North Korea. Another is yours truly, who happened to be in Pyongyang in 1989 – for the World Festival of Students and Youth, when the activist’s forbidden visit occurred – and a.
