Seo Kyung-won (徐敬元, born July 28, 1937) is a South Korean farmers' activist, democracy activist, and member of the 13th National Assembly. His family seat is Icheon, and he is from Sunchang County, North Jeolla Province.
Born Jul 28, 1937Last edited Oct 15, 2026, 2:51 PM
Details
Born
Jul 28, 1937
Born
July 28, 1937, Sunchang County, North Jeolla Province
A participant in the Gwangju Democratic Uprising, he secretly visited North Korea in August 1988. During a two-night, three-day stay, he held talks with Kim Il-sung, the State President, and Hŏ Dam, the Vice Premier, among others, before returning to South Korea. At the end of June 1989, he publicly disclosed this trip and voluntarily reported to the National Security Planning Agency (ANSP). During the agency's investigation, he disclosed that he had sketched Kim Il-sung's palm lines, which drew public attention.1 He had visited the North alone, met Chairman Kim Il-sung, and received 50,000 dollars in operating funds. The Supreme Court confirmed a ten-year sentence for him as a spy. He served 8 years and 6 months in prison before receiving a special pardon from President Kim Dae-jung.2
Biography
Childhood
He was not a "dropout" who attended elementary school for a short time; he was literally "uneducated," having never set foot in a school. He begged and cried because he envied his friends who carried their books around together, but his father refused to send him to school, saying that it was bad to study under the Japanese. When the Japanese colonial authorities made their final desperate efforts in the 1940s, his family refused to participate in Shinto shrine worship, and as a result fell out of favor with the Japanese. They moved into the mountains to live. While the young Seo Kyung-won lived with wild animals as his companions, the only thing he could read was the Bible.2
In August 1945, out of curiosity, Seo Kyung-won secretly obtained a newspaper from a Japanese man and read it. He heard the word "liberation" but did not know what it meant. When he told his father, his father came down from the mountain at once, danced joyfully, and shouted, "The Japanese have left!" After liberation, he came down from the mountains and lived for a time with his parents in a happy family. However, when the broke out, he was separated from his parents and sent to an orphanage called "Donggwangwon."
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Donggwangwon was an orphanage established by Yi Se-jong and his disciple Yi Hyeon-pil to care for orphans, and it was also a monastery founded on the principles of purity, poverty, obedience, and abstinence. Those who gathered there lived as a community, avoided family life, and lived together by supporting themselves through labor and caring for the abandoned. Seo Kyung-won's father also lived a monastic life under their influence.2
When the Korean War broke out, war orphans gathered at Donggwangwon. Seo Kyung-won spent his childhood there, studying the Bible and working with the others. After the war, this community farmed at the YMCA farm in Neunggok, Gyeonggi Province. In his recollection, "One day, after the harvest, we loaded the rice onto an oxcart and traveled along a rough road without asphalt, from Neunggok through Susaek to the Jongno YMCA in Seoul. Hyeon Dong-wan, then secretary of the Seoul YMCA, pushed the cart back, saying, 'Just take it and feed the children.' The adult pulling the cart insisted, 'No, take it,' and pushed it back... The adults engaged in a 'beautiful' tug-of-war, and the children who had come along shivered and spent the night in a YMCA tent."2
Rural Enlightenment Movement
Finding community life stifling, Seo Kyung-won left the monastery with his mother in 1958, when he was in his early twenties, and launched a rural youth enlightenment movement in Gokseong County. He gathered about forty local young men and preached, "You must study. If you only farm, people will look down on you," and he set up a night school. He took part in the 4-H movement (Head, Heart, Hands, Health). The youth association farmed together and collected membership dues to build a schoolhouse for the night school. Also, when the film "Shim Cheong" was popular, he obtained a film reel, collected half a doe of rice from each household, set up a screen, and showed the film. The villagers gathered to watch and enjoyed it.2 The name of the Gokseong youth association was "Hyangjinhoe," meaning "the countryside moves forward," an expression of a progressive spirit. Seo Kyung-won attended a lecture by Ham Seok-heon in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province. The organizers of Ham Seok-heon's lecture were from a Korea University group called "Hyangjinhoe," and he was inspired by this and named his group Hyangjinhoe.2
At that time, Seo also took part in the rural 4-H youth movement. Later, however, he evaluated his participation in the 4-H movement as having "served as a lackey of the United States." According to him, after World War II, the United States sent American advisory groups composed of 4-H alumni to countries under its rule. Ultimately, through these groups, he argued, the United States pursued an "Americanization" for the governance of the Third World, meaning ideological and cultural aggression.
Military Service
He also enlightened farmers as a teacher at the rural night school. However, in 1962, at age twenty-four, he received a draft notice, enlisted in the military, and after his discharge returned to Gwangju only to find that the night school building had been sold and turned into a tavern. After his discharge, he completed training at the Labor Issues Research Institute of Korea University. The Korea University Labor Research Group, led mainly by Lee Woo-jae and Kim Nak-jung, gathered workers and farmers for education. This led to Christian Academy education in 1974, and he joined labor and farmers' movements in the 1970s.
Conversion to Catholicism
After four days and five nights of training, Seo Kyung-won said that his eyes were truly opened. In his recollection, he had previously believed that a farmer should produce a lot, but he realized that what really mattered was selling at a fair price. Also, during the training period, he became associated with the Catholic Farmers' Association and threw himself fully into the farmers' movement.2 In 1976, through his involvement in the Hampyeong sweet potato struggle, Seo received baptism in the Catholic Church and converted. In 1972, when the Catholic Farmers' Association (Gananong) was launched, he joined it.
Activities in the Catholic Farmers' Association
Catholic Farmers' Association Activities
Apart from his activities in the association, he bought farmland himself and began farming. After starting Catholic Farmers' Association activities in Hampyeong, South Jeolla Province, Seo began a "rice production cost survey" in 1974. At that time, producing one sack of rice cost 85,000 won, but the government purchased it for 73,700 won. This was clearly a loss. Yet until then, farmers had been unable to accurately calculate what the production cost was, whether there was any profit, or how much they were losing. The rice production cost survey was the first of its kind in history. Farmers began to realize that the reason they could not escape poverty, despite working themselves to the bone, lay with the Park Chung-hee regime, which drove economic development at the expense of farmers' sacrifice.
The Hampyeong Sweet Potato Struggle
In 1976, the "Hampyeong Sweet Potato Struggle" began. That year, the South Jeolla Provincial branch of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation announced that it would purchase fresh sweet potatoes rather than dried ones (sliced and dried thin). The promise to buy all of the fresh sweet potatoes, which then cost about 1,000 won, at 1,317 won, the price of dried ones, gave farmers great hope. Cooperative staff visited sweet potato farms, distributed sacks printed with the cooperative's logo, and inflated their hopes.2
Hampyeong County, a major sweet potato producing area along with Haenam and Muan in South Jeolla Province, had a bountiful harvest that year. However, by November, when the harvest had ended, the cooperative had purchased less than 40% of the quantity. Sweet potatoes that farmers had not sold, trusting the cooperative's promise, began to rot in their storehouses. In the end, farmers were forced to sell their sweet potatoes at a bargain price of 400 won per sack. The Catholic Farmers' Association formed a committee for compensation for damage from the Hampyeong sweet potato incident and conducted an investigation. They began a struggle demanding compensation of 3.09 million won, the total damage of 160 farm households across nine villages. The total damage for the entire Hampyeong County was 140 million won.2
Eventually, he joined the Hampyeong sweet potato struggle. At first, seventeen people gathered to start the fight, but when the problem was not resolved even after a full year, the struggle spread across all of South Jeolla Province. In April 1977, the South Jeolla branch of the Catholic Farmers' Association held a prayer meeting at the Gyerim-dong church in Gwangju, and more than 600 members marched through the streets demanding a meeting with the head of the South Jeolla branch of the cooperative. They also traveled to major cities such as Seoul, Daejeon, and Busan, exposing the truth of the incident.
However, as Seo Kyung-won came under the watch of the authorities, he suffered great hardship. Attempts were made to brand him a "Communist," and he was openly threatened with, "Be careful if you don't want to die." In addition to the encouragement of Catholic clergy to convert, he was also slandered with, "What scheme are you running the association for when you aren't even a Catholic?" This became a reason for his conversion, and he received baptism as a Catholic.2
Arrest and Release
Arrest over the Andong Seed Potato Incident
In 1979, Seo Kyung-won was arrested in connection with the Andong seed potato struggle. The government had distributed rotten seed potatoes, ruining the potato harvest of Andong farmers. When the farmers demanded compensation, the authorities abducted and detained Oh Won-chun, a Catholic Farmers' Association member who had led the protest, for more than two weeks. When Oh made a public declaration of conscience to the press at the Catholic Andong Diocese, plainclothes police stormed the diocesan office and forcibly took away the priests and the association's leadership. Because of this, he was arrested for violating the Emergency Decrees. While he was in custody, on October 26, he learned of the death of Park Chung-hee.
1980
While staying in Hampyeong, Seo Kyung-won was identified by the new military leadership as a participant in the May 18 Democratic Uprising. On June 8, 1980, he was abducted by the police and detained for 37 days at the Hampyeong police station. He was then transferred to the Gwangju Security Command, where he suffered severe torture. Having had nothing to do with the May 18 Democratic Uprising, he was taken away and tortured without knowing why. He was then arrested on charges of "inciting insurrection," and that winter he was released, battered beyond recognition.2
At the time, he suffered from the aftereffects of torture for a short period. According to his recollection, "Because I was still young, I thought a hospital visit would be expensive, so I tried to recover on my own and went back to farming work. It was only much later that I realized how serious the aftereffects of the torture had been."2
Farmers' Movement and Entry into Politics
From March 1981, Seo Kyung-won served as the national chairman of the Catholic Farmers' Association and led the farmers' movement. As the democracy movement grew fierce in the 1980s, he joined the Democratic Unification Mass Movement Alliance (Mintongryon) in 1985 as a farmers' representative. In 1987, he was elected co-representative of the June Democratic Struggle.2 He also served as a central standing committee member of the Catholic Action Council, co-representative of the Democratic Unification Mass Movement Alliance, and co-representative of the committee against torture and fabricated charges of communism. In 1987, after Park Jong-chul died, he was elected co-representative of the memorial rally for the martyr Park Jong-chul.
In 1987, he took part in the founding of the newspaper Hankyoreh, and he was appointed co-representative of its founding initiators.
Later, as the unaffiliated figures and student activists who had led the democracy struggle were recruited, the group collectively joined the Peace Democratic Party. He and other unaffiliated figures and student activists entered the institutional political arena. In 1988, running under the Peace Democratic Party, led by Kim Dae-jung as its president, he ran for and won a seat in the 13th National Assembly election. In July of that year, Seo secretly visited North Korea and met Chairman Kim Il-sung.2
Visit to North Korea
In 1984, Seo Kyung-won attended the World Farmers' Organization meeting, where he met German democratic figures. Through Rev. Sung Nak-yong, he explored whether it was possible to enter North Korea.
In 1988, after contacts with activists outside the political establishment, he received approval from North Korea and visited via Czechoslovakia. While serving as a National Assembly member, he was preoccupied with the thought that "farmers cannot be liberated through political activity alone; the division issue must be resolved first." Before entering North Korea, he requested to meet Chairman Kim Il-sung in person, and after persistent requests he was granted permission. He was able to sit face to face with Chairman Kim for forty minutes and discuss unification.
Recalling that time, he said: "The Kim Il-sung I met was not the figure from anti-communist education. I thought he would be sitting in a golden chair, but when I arrived, he had come out first to greet me, a member of the opposition party, and his clothes were even more modest than mine. He used honorifics throughout, and when I asked how protocol should be handled, he said, 'Do as you find comfortable.' Even though there might be threats of terrorism, he let me bring my bag in as it was. At first, I thought he was an impostor because of that. When I was waiting for him in the corridor, he greeted me first with 'Nice to meet you,' and his voice boomed as if it were coming through a microphone."2
In the forty-minute talks, Seo presented various views on unification. These mainly concerned: "Attend the 88 Seoul Olympics," "Restore the Gyeongpyeong football tournament held during the Japanese colonial period," "Stop broadcasting propaganda to the South across the DMZ," "Promote exchanges of superior agricultural products and livestock seeds," "Open the doors so that Cardinal Kim Su-hwan can evangelize in Pyongyang," "Carry out mutual disarmament under UN supervision," and "Do not hand power down to your son."
Kim Il-sung responded generally positively, saying, "Whenever the Cardinal comes, we will open the doors. We will keep the doors open for anyone who comes." Regarding the Olympics, he explained that they had held talks with the South, but these had broken down. Seo recalled the conversation: "Chairman Kim's position was, '(Civilian exchanges and so on) are all good, but first a non-aggression treaty must be concluded. It's fine to go back and forth, but if one side fires a gun, won't that lead to war?' My position was that civilian exchanges must come first so that perceptions can change, and only then can we move to the stage of a non-aggression treaty. We had a difference of opinion on this point." He recalled this exchange.2 The two-night, three-day visit to Pyongyang from July 19 to 21 remained unknown to the public for ten months. It became known only on June 29, 1989, when he was arrested on charges of violating the National Security Act. Because it came right after the visit of Moon Ik-hwan to the North in late spring, and because he was a member of the opposition party, the incident had a major impact.2
Under the Roh Tae-woo administration, which had been forced to issue the June 29 Declaration in response to the democratic aspirations of the people unleashed by the June 1987 struggle, the 1988 general election produced a "divided government" in which the opposition held a majority, narrowing the government's power base. Hearings on the investigation of the May 18 incident followed, and in January 1989, democratic forces established the National Alliance of Democratic and National Movements (Chŏnmin ryŏn).2
Before and After the Arrest
The ANSP announced Seo Kyung-won's visit to the North as "espionage." It stated that he had received 50,000 dollars in operating funds from the North, that Kim Dae-jung, then president of the Peace Democratic Party, had delivered a letter to the North, and that Kim had received 10,000 dollars of the operating funds. The agency also rounded up key figures of the Peace Democratic Party and the Catholic Farmers' Association on charges of failing to report, and considered applying failure-to-report charges to Cardinal Kim Su-hwan and Fr. Ham Se-woong, to whom Seo had confessed his visit to the North.2 For the secret visit to the North, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for violating the National Security Act and lost his seat in the National Assembly.2
At his first meeting with his lawyer, which took place 25 days after his detention, Seo denied the espionage charges and stated that he had been tortured during the investigation. In particular, he exposed the fact that he had been personally tortured by Director Jeong Hyeong-geun.2 During the ANSP investigation, he disclosed that he had sketched Kim Il-sung's palm lines, which was publicized in the press and drew public attention.1 This was reported in the media and became a topic of public interest.
According to what he said in media interviews after his release, Jeong Hyeong-geun demanded, "We know you have gone to the North three times," and "Reveal what Kim Dae-jung ordered you to do before the visit," and subjected him to severe beatings. In the interview, regarding the most contentious issue at the time, the claim that the Peace Democratic Party was behind the visit, he said, "I went there and came back without any connection to the party." Regarding the 50,000 dollars, he said, "I demanded it for my unification work. I stated all of that. The ANSP announced it as operating funds."2
Later, he was also identified as a person connected with Kim Dae-jung's political funds and was investigated. Regarding the claim that Kim Dae-jung, as party president, had received 10,000 dollars, he said, "They pressed me so hard for four or five days that they nearly killed me, so during the prosecution investigation I confessed to giving 10,000 dollars, as they demanded. Then at trial I completely denied it." He also dismissed the idea, saying, "If I were going to give money, why would I give only 10,000 dollars when I could give all 50,000?"2
The next morning, when I looked at my face, the bruises had turned it completely black. There are no strong men in front of torture. If I so much as said what I wanted to say, a fist would fly immediately... (omitted hereafter)...2
Shortly after the launch of the Kim Young-sam administration in 1993, public calls for his release emerged, but these were ignored. He was sentenced to ten years in prison and was granted parole in 1998, nine years after his imprisonment.
Afterward, he continued to be elected and served as director of the Social Justice Research Institute, senior vice president of the Council of Pan-National Movement Organizations, and adviser to the National Reconciliation and Independent Unification Council, among other positions.
A participant in the Gwangju Democratic Uprising, he secretly visited North Korea in August 1988. During a two-night, three-day stay, he held talks with Kim Il-sung, the State President, and Hŏ Dam, the Vice Premier, among others, before returning to South Korea. At the end of June 1989, he publicly disclosed this trip and voluntarily reported to the National Security Planning Agency (ANSP). During the agency's investigation, he disclosed that he had sketched Kim Il-sung's palm lines, which drew public attention.1 He had visited the North alone, met Chairman Kim Il-sung, and received 50,000 dollars in operating funds. The Supreme Court confirmed a ten-year sentence for him as a spy. He served 8 years and 6 months in prison before receiving a special pardon from President Kim Dae-jung.2
Biography
Childhood
He was not a "dropout" who attended elementary school for a short time; he was literally "uneducated," having never set foot in a school. He begged and cried because he envied his friends who carried their books around together, but his father refused to send him to school, saying that it was bad to study under the Japanese. When the Japanese colonial authorities made their final desperate efforts in the 1940s, his family refused to participate in Shinto shrine worship, and as a result fell out of favor with the Japanese. They moved into the mountains to live. While the young Seo Kyung-won lived with wild animals as his companions, the only thing he could read was the Bible.2
In August 1945, out of curiosity, Seo Kyung-won secretly obtained a newspaper from a Japanese man and read it. He heard the word "liberation" but did not know what it meant. When he told his father, his father came down from the mountain at once, danced joyfully, and shouted, "The Japanese have left!" After liberation, he came down from the mountains and lived for a time with his parents in a happy family. However, when the Korean War broke out, he was separated from his parents and sent to an orphanage called "Donggwangwon."2
Life in the Orphanage
Donggwangwon was an orphanage established by Yi Se-jong and his disciple Yi Hyeon-pil to care for orphans, and it was also a monastery founded on the principles of purity, poverty, obedience, and abstinence. Those who gathered there lived as a community, avoided family life, and lived together by supporting themselves through labor and caring for the abandoned. Seo Kyung-won's father also lived a monastic life under their influence.2
When the Korean War broke out, war orphans gathered at Donggwangwon. Seo Kyung-won spent his childhood there, studying the Bible and working with the others. After the war, this community farmed at the YMCA farm in Neunggok, Gyeonggi Province. In his recollection, "One day, after the harvest, we loaded the rice onto an oxcart and traveled along a rough road without asphalt, from Neunggok through Susaek to the Jongno YMCA in Seoul. Hyeon Dong-wan, then secretary of the Seoul YMCA, pushed the cart back, saying, 'Just take it and feed the children.' The adult pulling the cart insisted, 'No, take it,' and pushed it back... The adults engaged in a 'beautiful' tug-of-war, and the children who had come along shivered and spent the night in a YMCA tent."2
Rural Enlightenment Movement
Finding community life stifling, Seo Kyung-won left the monastery with his mother in 1958, when he was in his early twenties, and launched a rural youth enlightenment movement in Gokseong County. He gathered about forty local young men and preached, "You must study. If you only farm, people will look down on you," and he set up a night school. He took part in the 4-H movement (Head, Heart, Hands, Health). The youth association farmed together and collected membership dues to build a schoolhouse for the night school. Also, when the film "Shim Cheong" was popular, he obtained a film reel, collected half a doe of rice from each household, set up a screen, and showed the film. The villagers gathered to watch and enjoyed it.2 The name of the Gokseong youth association was "Hyangjinhoe," meaning "the countryside moves forward," an expression of a progressive spirit. Seo Kyung-won attended a lecture by Ham Seok-heon in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province. The organizers of Ham Seok-heon's lecture were from a Korea University group called "Hyangjinhoe," and he was inspired by this and named his group Hyangjinhoe.2
At that time, Seo also took part in the rural 4-H youth movement. Later, however, he evaluated his participation in the 4-H movement as having "served as a lackey of the United States." According to him, after World War II, the United States sent American advisory groups composed of 4-H alumni to countries under its rule. Ultimately, through these groups, he argued, the United States pursued an "Americanization" for the governance of the Third World, meaning ideological and cultural aggression.
Military Service
He also enlightened farmers as a teacher at the rural night school. However, in 1962, at age twenty-four, he received a draft notice, enlisted in the military, and after his discharge returned to Gwangju only to find that the night school building had been sold and turned into a tavern. After his discharge, he completed training at the Labor Issues Research Institute of Korea University. The Korea University Labor Research Group, led mainly by Lee Woo-jae and Kim Nak-jung, gathered workers and farmers for education. This led to Christian Academy education in 1974, and he joined labor and farmers' movements in the 1970s.
Conversion to Catholicism
After four days and five nights of training, Seo Kyung-won said that his eyes were truly opened. In his recollection, he had previously believed that a farmer should produce a lot, but he realized that what really mattered was selling at a fair price. Also, during the training period, he became associated with the Catholic Farmers' Association and threw himself fully into the farmers' movement.2 In 1976, through his involvement in the Hampyeong sweet potato struggle, Seo received baptism in the Catholic Church and converted. In 1972, when the Catholic Farmers' Association (Gananong) was launched, he joined it.
Activities in the Catholic Farmers' Association
Catholic Farmers' Association Activities
Apart from his activities in the association, he bought farmland himself and began farming. After starting Catholic Farmers' Association activities in Hampyeong, South Jeolla Province, Seo began a "rice production cost survey" in 1974. At that time, producing one sack of rice cost 85,000 won, but the government purchased it for 73,700 won. This was clearly a loss. Yet until then, farmers had been unable to accurately calculate what the production cost was, whether there was any profit, or how much they were losing. The rice production cost survey was the first of its kind in history. Farmers began to realize that the reason they could not escape poverty, despite working themselves to the bone, lay with the Park Chung-hee regime, which drove economic development at the expense of farmers' sacrifice.
The Hampyeong Sweet Potato Struggle
In 1976, the "Hampyeong Sweet Potato Struggle" began. That year, the South Jeolla Provincial branch of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation announced that it would purchase fresh sweet potatoes rather than dried ones (sliced and dried thin). The promise to buy all of the fresh sweet potatoes, which then cost about 1,000 won, at 1,317 won, the price of dried ones, gave farmers great hope. Cooperative staff visited sweet potato farms, distributed sacks printed with the cooperative's logo, and inflated their hopes.2
Hampyeong County, a major sweet potato producing area along with Haenam and Muan in South Jeolla Province, had a bountiful harvest that year. However, by November, when the harvest had ended, the cooperative had purchased less than 40% of the quantity. Sweet potatoes that farmers had not sold, trusting the cooperative's promise, began to rot in their storehouses. In the end, farmers were forced to sell their sweet potatoes at a bargain price of 400 won per sack. The Catholic Farmers' Association formed a committee for compensation for damage from the Hampyeong sweet potato incident and conducted an investigation. They began a struggle demanding compensation of 3.09 million won, the total damage of 160 farm households across nine villages. The total damage for the entire Hampyeong County was 140 million won.2
Eventually, he joined the Hampyeong sweet potato struggle. At first, seventeen people gathered to start the fight, but when the problem was not resolved even after a full year, the struggle spread across all of South Jeolla Province. In April 1977, the South Jeolla branch of the Catholic Farmers' Association held a prayer meeting at the Gyerim-dong church in Gwangju, and more than 600 members marched through the streets demanding a meeting with the head of the South Jeolla branch of the cooperative. They also traveled to major cities such as Seoul, Daejeon, and Busan, exposing the truth of the incident.
However, as Seo Kyung-won came under the watch of the authorities, he suffered great hardship. Attempts were made to brand him a "Communist," and he was openly threatened with, "Be careful if you don't want to die." In addition to the encouragement of Catholic clergy to convert, he was also slandered with, "What scheme are you running the association for when you aren't even a Catholic?" This became a reason for his conversion, and he received baptism as a Catholic.2
Arrest and Release
Arrest over the Andong Seed Potato Incident
In 1979, Seo Kyung-won was arrested in connection with the Andong seed potato struggle. The government had distributed rotten seed potatoes, ruining the potato harvest of Andong farmers. When the farmers demanded compensation, the authorities abducted and detained Oh Won-chun, a Catholic Farmers' Association member who had led the protest, for more than two weeks. When Oh made a public declaration of conscience to the press at the Catholic Andong Diocese, plainclothes police stormed the diocesan office and forcibly took away the priests and the association's leadership. Because of this, he was arrested for violating the Emergency Decrees. While he was in custody, on October 26, he learned of the death of Park Chung-hee.
1980
While staying in Hampyeong, Seo Kyung-won was identified by the new military leadership as a participant in the May 18 Democratic Uprising. On June 8, 1980, he was abducted by the police and detained for 37 days at the Hampyeong police station. He was then transferred to the Gwangju Security Command, where he suffered severe torture. Having had nothing to do with the May 18 Democratic Uprising, he was taken away and tortured without knowing why. He was then arrested on charges of "inciting insurrection," and that winter he was released, battered beyond recognition.2
At the time, he suffered from the aftereffects of torture for a short period. According to his recollection, "Because I was still young, I thought a hospital visit would be expensive, so I tried to recover on my own and went back to farming work. It was only much later that I realized how serious the aftereffects of the torture had been."2
Farmers' Movement and Entry into Politics
From March 1981, Seo Kyung-won served as the national chairman of the Catholic Farmers' Association and led the farmers' movement. As the democracy movement grew fierce in the 1980s, he joined the Democratic Unification Mass Movement Alliance (Mintongryon) in 1985 as a farmers' representative. In 1987, he was elected co-representative of the June Democratic Struggle.2 He also served as a central standing committee member of the Catholic Action Council, co-representative of the Democratic Unification Mass Movement Alliance, and co-representative of the committee against torture and fabricated charges of communism. In 1987, after Park Jong-chul died, he was elected co-representative of the memorial rally for the martyr Park Jong-chul.
In 1987, he took part in the founding of the newspaper Hankyoreh, and he was appointed co-representative of its founding initiators.
Later, as the unaffiliated figures and student activists who had led the democracy struggle were recruited, the group collectively joined the Peace Democratic Party. He and other unaffiliated figures and student activists entered the institutional political arena. In 1988, running under the Peace Democratic Party, led by Kim Dae-jung as its president, he ran for and won a seat in the 13th National Assembly election. In July of that year, Seo secretly visited North Korea and met Chairman Kim Il-sung.2
Visit to North Korea
In 1984, Seo Kyung-won attended the World Farmers' Organization meeting, where he met German democratic figures. Through Rev. Sung Nak-yong, he explored whether it was possible to enter North Korea.
In 1988, after contacts with activists outside the political establishment, he received approval from North Korea and visited via Czechoslovakia. While serving as a National Assembly member, he was preoccupied with the thought that "farmers cannot be liberated through political activity alone; the division issue must be resolved first." Before entering North Korea, he requested to meet Chairman Kim Il-sung in person, and after persistent requests he was granted permission. He was able to sit face to face with Chairman Kim for forty minutes and discuss unification.
Recalling that time, he said: "The Kim Il-sung I met was not the figure from anti-communist education. I thought he would be sitting in a golden chair, but when I arrived, he had come out first to greet me, a member of the opposition party, and his clothes were even more modest than mine. He used honorifics throughout, and when I asked how protocol should be handled, he said, 'Do as you find comfortable.' Even though there might be threats of terrorism, he let me bring my bag in as it was. At first, I thought he was an impostor because of that. When I was waiting for him in the corridor, he greeted me first with 'Nice to meet you,' and his voice boomed as if it were coming through a microphone."2
In the forty-minute talks, Seo presented various views on unification. These mainly concerned: "Attend the 88 Seoul Olympics," "Restore the Gyeongpyeong football tournament held during the Japanese colonial period," "Stop broadcasting propaganda to the South across the DMZ," "Promote exchanges of superior agricultural products and livestock seeds," "Open the doors so that Cardinal Kim Su-hwan can evangelize in Pyongyang," "Carry out mutual disarmament under UN supervision," and "Do not hand power down to your son."
Kim Il-sung responded generally positively, saying, "Whenever the Cardinal comes, we will open the doors. We will keep the doors open for anyone who comes." Regarding the Olympics, he explained that they had held talks with the South, but these had broken down. Seo recalled the conversation: "Chairman Kim's position was, '(Civilian exchanges and so on) are all good, but first a non-aggression treaty must be concluded. It's fine to go back and forth, but if one side fires a gun, won't that lead to war?' My position was that civilian exchanges must come first so that perceptions can change, and only then can we move to the stage of a non-aggression treaty. We had a difference of opinion on this point." He recalled this exchange.2 The two-night, three-day visit to Pyongyang from July 19 to 21 remained unknown to the public for ten months. It became known only on June 29, 1989, when he was arrested on charges of violating the National Security Act. Because it came right after the visit of Moon Ik-hwan to the North in late spring, and because he was a member of the opposition party, the incident had a major impact.2
Under the Roh Tae-woo administration, which had been forced to issue the June 29 Declaration in response to the democratic aspirations of the people unleashed by the June 1987 struggle, the 1988 general election produced a "divided government" in which the opposition held a majority, narrowing the government's power base. Hearings on the investigation of the May 18 incident followed, and in January 1989, democratic forces established the National Alliance of Democratic and National Movements (Chŏnmin ryŏn).2
Before and After the Arrest
The ANSP announced Seo Kyung-won's visit to the North as "espionage." It stated that he had received 50,000 dollars in operating funds from the North, that Kim Dae-jung, then president of the Peace Democratic Party, had delivered a letter to the North, and that Kim had received 10,000 dollars of the operating funds. The agency also rounded up key figures of the Peace Democratic Party and the Catholic Farmers' Association on charges of failing to report, and considered applying failure-to-report charges to Cardinal Kim Su-hwan and Fr. Ham Se-woong, to whom Seo had confessed his visit to the North.2 For the secret visit to the North, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for violating the National Security Act and lost his seat in the National Assembly.2
At his first meeting with his lawyer, which took place 25 days after his detention, Seo denied the espionage charges and stated that he had been tortured during the investigation. In particular, he exposed the fact that he had been personally tortured by Director Jeong Hyeong-geun.2 During the ANSP investigation, he disclosed that he had sketched Kim Il-sung's palm lines, which was publicized in the press and drew public attention.1 This was reported in the media and became a topic of public interest.
According to what he said in media interviews after his release, Jeong Hyeong-geun demanded, "We know you have gone to the North three times," and "Reveal what Kim Dae-jung ordered you to do before the visit," and subjected him to severe beatings. In the interview, regarding the most contentious issue at the time, the claim that the Peace Democratic Party was behind the visit, he said, "I went there and came back without any connection to the party." Regarding the 50,000 dollars, he said, "I demanded it for my unification work. I stated all of that. The ANSP announced it as operating funds."2
Later, he was also identified as a person connected with Kim Dae-jung's political funds and was investigated. Regarding the claim that Kim Dae-jung, as party president, had received 10,000 dollars, he said, "They pressed me so hard for four or five days that they nearly killed me, so during the prosecution investigation I confessed to giving 10,000 dollars, as they demanded. Then at trial I completely denied it." He also dismissed the idea, saying, "If I were going to give money, why would I give only 10,000 dollars when I could give all 50,000?"2
The next morning, when I looked at my face, the bruises had turned it completely black. There are no strong men in front of torture. If I so much as said what I wanted to say, a fist would fly immediately... (omitted hereafter)...2
Shortly after the launch of the Kim Young-sam administration in 1993, public calls for his release emerged, but these were ignored. He was sentenced to ten years in prison and was granted parole in 1998, nine years after his imprisonment.
Afterward, he continued to be elected and served as director of the Social Justice Research Institute, senior vice president of the Council of Pan-National Movement Organizations, and adviser to the National Reconciliation and Independent Unification Council, among other positions.