[Editorial] A great irony

Oh Kil-nam met Marzuki Darusman, the special U.N. envoy on North Korean human rights, in Seoul Monday to seek his help in getting the return of his wife and two daughters now in captivity in North Korea. Last week, the 69-year-old retired economist was in Washington, D.C., to appeal to a meeting of legislators from around the world in his desperate efforts to be reunited with his family, which he had taken to the North from Germany in 1985 and was left behind when he returned to Europe a year later.

Yun I-sang, the Korean-born composer who died in Germany in 1995, is thought to have been involved in the tragedy of Oh. Oh claims he was persuaded by Yun to start a new life in North Korea with his family, wife Shin Suk-ja and daughters Hye-won and Gyu-won. Working for a propaganda radio station in Pyongyang, Oh realized that he made a big mistake and he took political asylum in Copenhagen when he was given a mission to lure some South Korean residents in Europe to the North.

Back in Germany, he asked Yun, a trusted friend of Kim Il-sung, to bring his family back. But he was only given a picture of his wife and daughters for consolation. Later, Oh found the picture was taken in a concentration camp near Pyongyang.

Meanwhile, Yun made frequent visits to North Korea with his wife Lee Sook-ja, now 84, and daughter Yun Jeong, 61, to oversee the operation of the Yun I-sang Music Institute which opened in Pyongyang in 1984. Since his death, Yun’s wife and daughter have been moving freely between Berlin, Pyongyang and Tongyeong, Yun’s birthplace on the coast of South Gyeongsang Province. They attended the 30th Yun I-sang Music Festival in Pyongyang in September and are back in their home in Tongyeong where Yun’s memorial service was held early this month, followed by an international musical event dedicated to the composer.

Oh also stays in Tongyeong, which is also the birthplace of his wife, to join the campaigners there working to ensure the return of his family, collecting signatures from sympathetic people across the country. There is little hope that their efforts, if with the intervention of the U.N. and the coalition of parliamentarians for North Korean human rights, would succeed in the foreseeable future. The plight of Oh looks yet worse when juxtaposed against the freedom enjoyed by the family of Yun I-sang.