A Reality Already Known in 2007— A Fact I Never Learned Until I Began Reading Sankei —
Written on April 26, 2017, this essay reflects on a 2007 Sankei Shimbun investigation revealing the role of pro–North Korea scientific organizations in supporting Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. The author confronts his own shock at having remained unaware of these facts while relying on Asahi Shimbun, exposing a broader failure of Japan’s media environment and its transformation into a de facto spy haven.
2017-04-26
I had not been reading the Sankei Shimbun until August three years earlier, and therefore I knew absolutely nothing about this fact in 2007.
I received a follow from a man who works as a singer-songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee.
When I searched for the chapter I had published yesterday—“What academia should have addressed is the fact that a professor affiliated with a nuclear-related department at Kyoto University, reportedly a resident Korean, had played an important role in North Korea’s nuclear development”—in order to verify that essay, the following article appeared.
Because I had not been reading the Sankei Shimbun until August three years earlier, I had absolutely no knowledge of this fact in 2007.
All readers of the Asahi Shimbun would likely be just as stunned as I was.
At the same time, this also proves that my own argument regarding the Asahi Shimbun’s posture—namely, that an elite member of Chongryon with precisely such a background (educated at Korean schools and a graduate of Peking University) serves as a foreign affairs desk editor at TV Asahi—is entirely correct.
It is truly a reality of a spy heaven so pathetic that nothing could surpass it.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that every employee of the Asahi Shimbun is, at this very moment, another Ozaki Hotsumi.
A massive thirteen-story building stands firmly along Hakusan Street in Hakusan, Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo.
On its rooftop rises a gigantic shortwave antenna.
On the sixth floor of this building, which houses numerous organizations affiliated with Chongryon, is the headquarters of the Association of Korean Scientists and Engineers in Japan (KASE).
When a photographer from this newspaper attempted to take photographs, a man immediately emerged from the building and demanded, “For what purpose are you taking pictures?”
Several senior members of KASE were greeted with thunderous applause in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, in March 1999, at the National Conference of Scientists and Technicians held at the People’s Palace of Culture.
In late August of the previous year, North Korea had launched the medium-range ballistic missile “Taepodong-1,” which flew over Japan and landed off the coast of Sanriku.
Standing on the podium, Workers’ Party Secretary Choe Thae-bok declared, “With our own technology, we successfully launched the artificial satellite ‘Kwangmyongsong-1,’” and went on to praise the KASE delegation, including then-chairman Sin Jae-gyun, as follows.
“The Korean scientists and engineers in Japan have actively carried out patriotic activities for the prosperity and development of the socialist fatherland and national reunification, deeply engraving in their hearts the honor of having become citizens of Juche Korea, and have made major contributions to economic construction together with scientists and engineers of the fatherland.”
The success of the launch of “Kwangmyongsong-1,” a ballistic missile that shocked the Japanese public, was thus acknowledged by party officials as the product of KASE’s “patriotic activities.”
In fact, the activities of this organization—referred to by Chongryon affiliates as “Kargi”—had been shrouded in secrecy.
That veil was stripped away by the Metropolitan Police Department’s Public Security Bureau in October of the year before last, when it conducted its first-ever search of KASE headquarters in connection with violations of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law by KASE officials.
The seized documents revealed astonishing facts.
First, it became clear that KASE was directly under the control of the Workers’ Party of Korea’s Operations Department for External Liaison and had been instructed to conduct joint research with institutions such as the State Academy of Sciences, a government organ of North Korea.
Directives from the External Liaison Department to KASE stated that “science and technology are pillars for making the fatherland a strong and prosperous great power.”
“Strong and prosperous great power” was a national objective of General Secretary Kim Jong-il, a slogan aimed at elevating the nation into a major power in military and technological terms.
Specifically, KASE was called upon to contribute to the advancement of nuclear and missile technologies.
This essay continues.