Bid to Defector Puts Seoul in a Quandary

Invitations from three U.S. congressmen to Hwang Jang-yop, a North Korean defector, to testify in the United States have handed a hot potato to the South Korean government.

It would be difficult, a spokesman said Wednesday, for South Korea to permit the visit. Mr. Hwang is a former secretary of the Workers' Party, and the highest-ranking official ever to defect from North Korea.

Invitations from Senator Jesse Helms, R-North Carolina, Representative Henry Hyde, R-Illinois, and Representative Christopher Cox, R-California were delivered by their assistants, who came to Korea Sunday. Suzanne Scholte, president of a non-governmental defense forum, also sent an invitation.

Mr. Hyde asked Mr. Hwang and his personal secretary, Kim Dok-hong, to testify on the North Korean government and the human rights situation before the House Foreign Relations Committee on July 20. Mr. Cox asked him to meet his committee July 19 and 26.

Senator Helms, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued the first invitation to Mr. Hwang last November. The new invitations referred to a statement made by President Kim Dae-jung to Mr. Helms in March assenting to Mr. Hwang's U.S. visit on the condition that his safety be guaranteed. The four pledged safety guarantees for Mr. Hwang.

But, said an official at the South Korean National Intelligence Service, "The invitations were written as individuals. The government holds that Mr. Hwang's safety must be guaranteed at the governmental level, which is to be deliberated by Korea and the United States, to enable the visit."

Another official said, "Even if his safety is guaranteed, we will be able to send him to attend unofficial meetings only."

The South Korean government is conflicted in mulling over the invitations, analysts said, because if Mr. Hwang, who is very critical of the regime in Pyongyang, publicly speaks on the human rights situation in the North, the ramifications for President Kim's "sunshine policy" toward the North would be awkward. At the same time, flatly forbidding the visit could become a source of diplomatic tension between Seoul and Washington.

The invitations stated that logistics of Mr. Hwang's trip, if made, would be handled by the National Congress of Freedom and Democracy, a right-wing civic group in Seoul.

by Lee Chul-hee