A Christian clergyman
from South Korea was sentenced to five years in prison for travelling
North Korea and staying there for two months without authorisation.
South Korean law bans and severely punishes unauthorised visits to the
North.
Rev Han Sang-ryol was also convicted because his visit
came at a time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas over the
sinking of ROKN Cheonan.
The incident left 46 south Korean sailors dead, killed
when North Korea fired a missile that sank the corvette as it sailed
near North Korea’s territorial waters.
A diplomatic crisis followed that brought the peninsula close to another civil war.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak warned
pro-unification activists that they would suffer serious consequences if
they engaged in propaganda.
Rev Han is a well-known pro-unification activist and
supporter of the ‘sunshine policy’, South Korea’s policy of
rapprochement with the North, which began in the 1990s but was abandoned
by the current administration.
Prosecutors had demanded a ten-year jail term. In its
ruling, the court said, “The defendant went to the North without the
Unification Ministry's approval,” and “he would have been aware that his
activities would be extensively reported by the North's media for the
regime's propaganda”.
SIC: AN/INT'L