Hwang Jang-yop, a key architect of North Korea’s state
policy of isolationism and self-reliance, was found dead Sunday at his Seoul
home at the age of 87. Hwang was one of North Korea’s most powerful officials
when he shocked the world by defecting to South Korea in 1997 via China and the
Philippines.
After arriving in South Korea, Hwang wrote books and
delivered speeches condemning Kim’s regime as authoritarian. He lived under
tight police security amid fears of assassination attempts by North Korean
agents.
An initial examination of Hwang’s body showed no signs of
foul play, though final autopsy results have yet to be released.
“Now, we face a sad moment of parting with a great teacher
of this era,” veteran conservative lawmaker Lee Hoi-chang said in a funeral
speech Thursday. “We will make more efforts to realize Hwang’s last wish to
achieve democracy and people’s freedom in North Korea as well as national
unification.”
About 300 government officials, politicians and fellow North
Korean defectors paid respect to Hwang by laying white flowers — a traditional
symbol of mourning in South Korea — and bowing before his framed photo. Later
Thursday, several hundred activists and defectors separately offered tribute,
burned incense and chanted anti-Pyongyang slogans at a makeshift mourning site
in Seoul.
Hwang’s body was later laid to rest at a national cemetery
south of Seoul.
Earlier this week, Hwang was posthumously decorated with a
top government medal for his efforts to bring democracy to the North and
disclose the reality of life in the authoritarian country.
Hwang had been close to North Korean founder Kim Il Sung —
the father of current leader Kim Jong Il — and had tutored the younger Kim
about the country’s guiding “juche” philosophy of self-reliance.
Hwang, however, said he decided to leave the North because
he lost hope for the hard-line communist country, which became unable to feed
its own people under Kim Jong Il’s rule.
North Korea reportedly vowed revenge against Hwang, calling
him a betrayer. Earlier this year, two North Korean army majors were sentenced
to 10 years each in prison in South Korea for planning to assassinate him.
Pyongyang has denied the plot.
On Thursday, North Korea’s state media issued a commentary
calling Hwang’s death a “heaven-sent curse.” Hwang “was the man who ran away to
the south for his personal pleasure and complacency by abandoning our country
and party and leaving behind his family members,” the Uriminzokkiri website
said in a commentary, according to Seoul’s Yonhap news agency.
The commentary couldn’t be found on the website and Yonhap
said the North removed it about 20 minutes after its posting.
Not all, however, were satisfied with how the conservative
government of President Lee Myung-bak handled the aftermath of Hwang’s death.
“Hwang was North Korea’s representative theorist who
formulated its juche policy,” the liberal Hankyoreh newspaper said in an
editorial Thursday. “We cannot say he has nothing to do with the crisis North
Korea faces now.”
The two Koreas are still technically at war because their
1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Hwang had a wife, two sons and a daughter in North Korea
before his defection, and media reports have said they subsequently received
unspecified punishment.
