East Asia News & Politics Thread: China, South Korea, Japan...

Yamagami told the police that the day before the deadly shooting, he went to the western city of Okayama, where Abe had also been giving a campaign speech for Sunday's House of Councillors election, according to the sources.

Abe died from blood loss, the police said, with an autopsy determining that there were two gunshot wounds on his upper left arm and neck.

Yamagami has denied he committed the crime because he was opposed to Abe's political beliefs, according to the police.

The police searched his home Friday, finding items believed to be explosives and homemade guns, including ones similar to the weapon used in the attack, they said.

Yamagami, who was unemployed, had previously worked for a manufacturer in the Kansai region from around the fall of 2020, but he quit in May this year, according to a staffing agency employee. He was previously a member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force for about three years through August 2005.

At least one of the two North Korean fishermen repatriated under South Korea’s previous Moon Jae-in administration appears to have physically resisted when officials handed them over to DPRK authorities at Panmunjom, newly revealed photos showed Tuesday.

The ten images provided to NK News by South Korean lawmaker Jun Joo-hyae and the unification ministry shine new light on the controversial 2019 case, raising questions about the government’s decision to send back the North Koreans accused of murdering fellow crewmen despite their stated desire to remain in the South and concerns they could face inhumane punishment in the DRPK.

“The Unification Ministry has … taken photos of the repatriation of North Koreans at Panmunjom for the record,” the ministry told NK News, confirming the images first reported by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

Ji Seong-ho, a defector lawmaker with the conservative People’s Power Party who escaped North Korea in 2006, told NK News that he is “speechless” looking at the photos, calling the repatriation a “barbaric crime against humanity.”

He described the fishermen as physically resisting “with all their might not to be sent back to the North,” stating this should have been considered as an expression of their intention to stay in the South.

“It’s just absolutely shocking to look at these photos. I can’t believe this happened in South Korea, a democratic country,” Ji said.

He added that the repatriation is “nothing less than murder,” blaming then-director of the National Security Office Chung Eui-yong and head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) Suh Hoon for making the final decision.

Asked why the U.N. Command (UNC) responsible for securing Panmunjom did not intervene, Ji said the UNC would have been in a difficult position due to Seoul’s decision to repatriate the fishermen. “But they would have documented it. If so, the world needs to know.”

The photos provided to NK News appear to show a UNC staff member pointing their phone toward South Korean officials as they struggle to force a resisting North Korean over the border, though it isn’t clear if the staff member was recording the scene.

The unification ministry told NK News on Tuesday that it did not participate in the joint investigation into the fishermen around the time of repatriation. In a background briefing earlier in the day, the ministry called the decision to repatriate the North Koreans “wrong in some part,” reversing the government’s original position that “heinous criminals” cannot be considered refugees under international law.

“Through the inter-Korean joint liaison office, the South conveyed its intention to deport North Korean fishermen to the North and … the North expressed its will to take over,” the ministry said.

“The North Korean fishermen are citizens of the Republic of Korea under the Constitution. Considering the penalties they would receive once they are handed over to North Korea, it is clear that there is a problem in the repatriation of North Korean fishermen,” the ministry told NK News. “The Ministry of Unification plans to fully cooperate upon the request of the investigation agency.”

One legal expert told NK News that the 2019 repatriation breached multiple international laws, stating the case shows how easy it is for politicians to “misuse” South Korea’s Constitution by labeling North Korea not as a “foreign country” but one that has “special relations” with the South.

“When everybody knows how grave North Korea’s violation of human rights is … it’s common sense not to send them back to the North this way in terms of right to life,” said Ethan Shin of the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG). “South Korea is a signatory to Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, for example, and this should be seen as South Korea having breached responsibilities in international law.”

South Korea should have followed normal legal procedures covering extradition the same as for non-North Korean foreign criminals, regardless of whether the two men were guilty of murder, Shin said.

Similarly, Amnesty International issued a statement in 2019 saying the repatriation was a “denial of their right to a fair trial,” and the U.N. special rapporteur for North Korean human rights has criticized Seoul’s decision as a violation of “the principle of non-refoulement,” which dictates that no one should be returned to a country where they would face cruel or inhuman treatment or punishment.

Peter Ward, a North Korea expert and a contributor to NK PRO, described the photos as “horrifying.”

“The defense offered [by ROK government] would likely be ‘they’re murderers,’ but that’s irrelevant. South Korea has no extradition treaty with the North and there was no formal process by which to do this,” he said.

“Sadly, the rights of North Korean criminals matter little in the minds of a lot of people … but it’s tantamount to cold-blooded murder for political ends by those who made the decision,” Ward added.

But longtime Korea watcher Aidan Foster-Carter countered that the release of the photos is not news despite being “striking visual imagery,” raising concerns that the new administration of President Yoon Suk-yeol has decided to “play politics and go after Moon.”

This is a “very bad move,” he said, stating it perpetuates a “vicious cycle of revenge” in South Korean politics and “imperils” the country’s intelligence and security.

“Moon was playing politics in 2019, and Yoon is playing politics now,” Foster-Carter said.

The repatriated crewmen “were cold-blooded mass murderers of their innocent shipmates,” he added. “Any government would want them back, and has the right to. But sure, due process wasn’t followed. No formal extradition.”

A joint investigation by government agencies at the time of the incident concluded that the two fishermen murdered 16 fellow crewmen, and the unification ministry said the North Koreans were not eligible for protection or refugee status due to their alleged crimes.

But the government publicized few details about how the agencies reached their conclusions, leading some conservative lawmakers to object to the decision and the way the investigation was conducted.