Activist-turned-lawmaker under fire for allegedly calling N.K. defectors 'traitors'

A ruling party lawmaker demanded Monday that one of South Korea's best-known former pro-unification activists and now an opposition lawmaker offer a sincere apology again for insulting him and North Korean defectors as "traitors."

Rep. Lim Su-kyung of the main opposition Democratic United Party hurled the insult and other abusive remarks during an impromptu meeting with a defector-turned-college student at a bar on Friday, according to a Facebook posting by the student, Baek Yo-sep.

Lim, a former pro-North Korea student activist, became widely known after making an unauthorized trip to the communist nation in 1989 and meeting with then leader Kim Il-sung, the North's founder and grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un. 

Pyongyang called her the "flower of unification" at the time.

She entered parliament as a proportional candidate of the DUP in April's general elections.

Baek quoted Lim as denouncing North Korean defectors as traitors and having "no roots." She also vilified Rep. Ha Tae-kyung of the ruling Saenuri Party, who had once worked with Lim in the 1980s, as a traitor for his conversion to an anti-Pyongyang activist, Baek said.

Lim was also quoted as saying she will "kill the traitor (Ha) with my hands."

Baek said Lim became abruptly upset following a joke he cracked to her after some Lim aides had Baek's photos taken with Lim deleted from his phone. After Lim denied she ordered the deletion, Baek said he joked that in North Korea, doing something at will without instruction from the supreme leader carries a "death by shooting" punishment.

Baek said Lim denounced him for working with Ha to improve the North's human rights situation.

As the traitor remarks drew strong criticism, Lim offered an apology Sunday, claiming in a statement that she was referring to only Ha as a traitor for joining the conservative ruling party, and that she never meant to describe defectors as such.

On Monday, Ha accused Lim of lying and demanded she sincerely apologize again.

"Rep. Lim holds hostility toward North Korean defectors and thinks of defectors as traitors," Ha said. "But she said in the statement that she never called North Korean defectors traitors, but she said I am a traitor just because I joined the Saenuri Party, not because I engaged in a human rights movement helping defectors."

(Yonhap News)