A court Wednesday sentenced a 33-year-old man to one year in prison suspended for two years for threatening to blow up a plane a former South Korean first lady took to Pyongyang.
Judge Kim Yun-seon of the Seoul Central District Court suspended the sentence for the man, surnamed Park, for two years, saying, “The accused committed the crime while engaging in activities related to North Korea’s human rights situation, and he has not been punished except for being fined.”
He was accused of writing a one-page letter threatening to blow up the plane of Lee Hee-ho, the widow of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, when she traveled to North Korea in August.
Lee, a symbolic figure for inter-Korean reconciliation due to her late husband’s accomplishments, returned home on Aug. 8, after a four-day trip to promote reconciliation on the divided Korean Peninsula.
Kim, who died in 2009, was the architect of the “sunshine” policy that actively pushed for cross-border exchanges and reconciliation. He held the first inter-Korean summit with then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000. At that time, Lee accompanied her husband to Pyongyang. (Yonhap)
