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S. Korea lifts months-old ban on N. Korean-made bust of composer
SEOUL, March 4 (Yonhap) -- South Korea has decided to allow a North Korean-made bust of a renowned late composer to enter the country, an official said Thursday, nine months after the statue was sent from the communist nation but then ended up at a port amid nuclear tensions.
A private South Korean foundation commemorating composer Yun I-sang sought to bring the donated bust from North Korea because it accurately resembles the late artist who garnered wide fame in both Koreas before his death in 1995. The bust was shipped to a South Korean port in June last year, but has since been kept from leaving the port amid heightened tensions following Pyongyang's nuclear test in the previous month.
On Thursday, a Unification Ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said his government has approved the release of the bust from Incheon port, west of Seoul.
"The decision was made Wednesday to have it released," he said without elaborating.
Yun was put behind bars for two years after being convicted in 1967 on charges of spying for North Korea under South Korea's anti-communist law that bans contact with North Koreans without government approval. He was released from prison after a group of fellow musicians abroad filed a petition seeking his freedom. Yun chose to become a naturalized German in 1971.
The National Intelligence Agency publicly said in 2006 that its investigation that led to the imprisonment of Yun and other South Koreans studying in East Berlin was a political machination that used such means as torture and illegal arrests to incriminate them.
Inter-Korean relations, which frayed after the inauguration of a conservative government in Seoul in early 2008, further sank when Pyongyang raised tension with its nuclear test last year.
The bust will be displayed at a museum dedicated to Yun in his hometown on South Korea's south coast, according to officials at the foundation commemorating him. The officials say they requested the North to create a replica of the bust of Yun several years ago because theirs in the South did not resemble the composer.
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