N. Korea used progressive party as dvoke for revolution in S. Korea

Kim Young-hwan, the founder of the National Liberation faction in South Korea in the 1980s, converted to a believer in democratic ideology after witnessing massive starvations in North Korea in the mid-1990s, and is currently working as a human rights activist for North Koreans. He founded the Minhyukdang (People`s Democratic Revolutionary Party), an underground organization in the South, at the instruction of the North Korean Workers’ Party on March 16, 1992. Two months later, the North places secret order to the party to collect an operational fund for spying it had buried at a dvoke at the village of Oepo-ri, Ganghwa County, Incheon. Kim instructed a member of his organization to take out from the dvoke 400,000 U.S. dollars in operational fund for spying, two pistols and ammunition, two radios and secret codes for reporting.

Dvoke is a secretive burial site where a North Korean spy buries items to convey them to a resident spy in the South. The term derives from “dub” in Russian meaning oak tree, and originates from the practice in which people traded items by leaving marks on big oak trees during Second World War in the Siberian region where communications tools were a rarity. The People`s Democratic Revolutionary Party is the origin of Rep. Lee Seok-ki of the Unified Progressive Party, who is awaiting trial for rebellion collusion charges, and the Revolutionary Organization, the underground organization that Lee led. Lee was the vice chairman of the People`s Democratic Revolutionary Party’s southern Gyeonggi Provincial chapter.

Dvoke is evolving in this era of the Internet. South Korean national security authorities recently discovered dozens of email messages that a senior Unified Progressive Party member, identified by Jeon, sent to the 225 Bureau, the North’s spying agency targeting the South and the Jochongryeon (the pro-North Korean organization of ethnic Koreans in Japan) under the bureau to update its activities. Jeon was arrested on November 28 on the charge of taking secretive order from a North Korean spy from the 225 Bureau, who was active in China, and thus violating the National Security Act.

What is interesting here is that the recipient of the emails that Jeon sent was also Jeon himself. That is, he shared his email ID and password with North Korea and communicated with the North via a single email account. It is a cyber dvoke, which does not reveal the recipient of messages. He used an overseas email account to render it difficult for South Korean security authorities to trace him down. This effectively indicates that the Unified Progressive Party’s activities can be suspected of being closely linked with Pyongyang.

The Constitutional Court will soon start hearings on the motion to dismantle the Unified Progressive Party, which was demanded by the government. Through this case, North Korea is found to have used the Unified Progressive Party as dvoke for its penetration into South Korean state institutions. The Constitutional Court should bring an end to controversy over dismantlement of the party via strict and prompt proceeding of the trial.