By BABAMOTO
RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J.—Two North Korean women refugees have alleged that a Seoul-based clergyman, famed for helping defectors flee the communist state, sexually assaulted them and used threats to keep them silent. The allegations first came to light back in May at a Flushing, NY press conference sponsored by a coalition of Korean American Christian organizations and a North Korean refugee aid group.
The two women, Shin Yuu-mi and Ma Yong-ae, told reporters Rev. Chun Ki-won, pastor and CEO of the Seoul-based Durihana, Inc., tried to rape them and used intimidation to prevent them from speaking out. The pair filed criminal sexual harassment complaints in June against Chun at the NYPD’s Queens-Flushing 109 Precinct and the Ridgefield Park Police Department in New Jersey, respectively. The New York edition of Joongahn Ilbo updated the story in its Aug. 10 edition.
Rev. Chun and his efforts to assist North Korean defectors were featured in the 2004 award-winning documentary Seoul Train by Colorado-based documentary filmmakers Jim Butterworth and Lisa Sleeth. In the February 2009 issue of National Geographic, Chun was the focus of Escape From North Korea by Tom O’Neill.
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Current TV reporters Mitchell Koss, Euna Lee and Laura Ling consulted with Durihana’s Rev. Chun Ki-won in planning their ill-fated trip to the China-North Korea border March 17 that resulted in the arrests and imprisonment of Lee and Ling for 141 days in the DPRK capital. Chun has said he introduced the Current TV team to a guide Kim Seung-cheol, who reportedly accompanied the Americans onto North Korean soil on Mar. 17 but managed, along with Koss, to elude border guards.
Koss, Lee and Ling traveled to the region in early March to interview North Korean defectors for a story on the trafficking of refugee women into prostitution.
