Idiots protesting the importation of US beef are allowed to assault and beat Korean policemen without being sent to jail, while someone that is actually doing something noble for South Korean citizens kidnapped by the North Koreans is sent to jail:

Choi Sung-yong, president of the Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea, was sent to prison on Wednesday. He had been given a W500,000 (US$1=W1,153) fine last June for obstructing official business by demonstrating in front of a hotel where inter-Korean ministerial talks were being held, demanding the return of South Korean prisoners of war in North Korea and South Korean nationals kidnapped by the communist country. Instead of paying the fine, Choi opted to take nine days of hard labor. He went to jail not because he could not afford to pay the W500,000 fine, but to highlight the error in the government’s policy on South Koreans languishing in the North.

Choi is the son of a South Korean fisherman kidnapped by North Koreans. He dedicated his life to the release of South Korean kidnap victims after seeing his mother cry out for the return of her husband in 1992 while Lee In-mo, a North Korean long-term prisoner, was sent back to the North. He personally brought back six South Korean abduction victims from North Korea. In October 2005, North Korea is said to have ordered Choi’s elimination.

Choi was charged by the Unification Ministry with obstruction of official business again last August. The reason was that Choi obstructed a hearing unilaterally organized by the ministry to discuss measures to compensate the families of South Koreans abducted by North Korea.

The government has not secured the release of a single South Korean abduction victim. Choi had been doing what his government should have done. He quit his job and is using his own money for his efforts. If the government had not ignored its duty to win the release of the victims, there would have been no need for Choi to sacrifice himself for this cause, risking his life in the process. And there would be no reason for him to demonstrate, trying to draw the government’s attention on the issue.  [Chosun Ilbo]

I can’t help but admire someone like Choi Sung-yong who has pretty much dedicated his life to a cause much bigger them himself that his own government could care less about.  Lee Myung-bak has talked a big game about the North Korean human rights and abductee issues, but under his administration one of the people that has advocated so strongly for the return of South Koreans kidnapped by the North is being sent to jail.  If Lee Myung-bak wanted to make a statement about human rights he could do so right now by given Choi a pardon.

Here is more about Choi’s incredible activism:

Choi has become the embodiment of hope for families whose loved ones have been abducted by North Korea. His own father was kidnapped from a fishing boat in 1967. Pushed by a mother who “ordered” him to bring his father back, Choi, 55, has spent 15 years developing a network to penetrate the mists of North Korea.

Over the years, his “messengers,” as he calls them, have managed to locate some of the abducted South Koreans and have freed five, at a price as high as $30,000 each.

The story of Choe’s rescue underscores the perils of Choi’s enterprise. More than three decades after being abducted, Choe was still closely watched by North Korean security agents and afraid to risk escape.

“For 32 years I lived under the surveillance of the North Korean security agency,” he said at a news conference after his release. “I was not able to eat or live properly.”

So acute was his fear that he went to the local police department and reported some of the messengers sent to rescue him. Four of the eight Choi dispatched ended up in the hands of North Korean authorities. Their fate is unknown.

“In the end, this is a happy story,” Choi said recently in his cramped Seoul office, its walls papered with photos of abducted South Koreans. They are haunting portraits of previous lives, snapped on graduation days or at tourist attractions with left-behind wives and children. “But there were sacrifices,” he added.

“It’s like the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’ – a lot of people sacrificed to save one man.”  [LA Times]

Make sure to also read the story of a 66 year old grandma that rescued her abducted husband from North Korea with the help of Choi’s group that the South Korean government tried to stop.

What makes this abductee issue even more frustrating is that the former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was able to get the North Koreans to return Japanese citizens kidnapped by the regime, but the South Korean government has yet to get North Korea to return one kidnapped South Korean citizen despite the billions of dollars South Korea has funneled as aid to North Korea over the years.

Finally, people like Choi Sung-yong also show what a fraud groups like Amnesty International are.  They keep themselves busy issuing reports championing the idiotic US beef protesters, but has done nothing to aid North Korean human rights and abductee groups like Choi’s.

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