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Relations Tested in Case of South Korean Activist Detained in China

SEOUL, South Korea — In a case that has tested relations between Beijing and Seoul, a prominent South Korean campaigner for democracy in North Korea has been under detention in China for more than two months, and South Korean officials said on Thursday that he was being denied access to consular services and a lawyer.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said China had dismissed repeated demands for details about the charge, “endangering national security,” on which the activist, Kim Young-hwan, was detained. Although China insists that it is handling the case according to its laws, officials in Seoul have condemned it as a violation of human rights. International rights activists and the European Parliament have demanded Mr. Kim’s release.

For many South Koreans, Mr. Kim’s case reinforces China’s image here as an overbearing neighbor, despite their thriving bilateral trade ties. The case also highlights the Chinese government’s sensitivity regarding any activities that might cause instability in its ally North Korea.

“China is treating a campaigner for democracy in North Korea as if he were one of its dissidents,” said Ha Tae-keung, a rights activist and member of the South Korean Parliament. “I believe North Korea is behind this and that China is effectively acting on its behalf.”

Mr. Kim, 49, was arrested in Dalian, in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning, on March 29 with three South Korean colleagues. The Chinese Ministry of State Security transferred the four men to Dandong, a city on the North Korean border, where rights activists suspect that the Chinese have been investigating them in consultation with North Korean officials.

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Cho Sung-ja, left, mother of the detained activist Kim Young-hwan, with Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan in Seoul in May.Credit...Pool photo by Lee Jin-Man

Mr. Kim’s colleagues have said little about what he was doing in China other than, in the words of one colleague, “He went to the North Korea-China border the way people working for democracy in Myanmar travel to the Myanmar-Thai border.”

North Korea has reasons to dislike Mr. Kim. He is a skilled campaigner against dictatorship. In the 1980s, he was a crucial ideologue in the South Korean student movement that opposed the government of the military strongman Chun Doo-hwan and eventually forced it to agree to democratic reforms.

Mr. Kim was widely recognized as a mastermind behind the students’ transformation into a pro-North Korean, anti-American political force that fed off Koreans’ perception of their nation as divided in the interests of superpowers.

Mr. Kim was imprisoned and tortured in the 1980s. He has since said that it was not the torture, but a meeting with the North Korean founding president, Kim Il-sung, arranged surreptitiously by the North, that changed his thinking. The activist said he found a babbling, ignorant autocrat, not the fierce nationalist and former anti-imperialist guerrilla leader he had helped lionize. On his return home, he became a vocal opponent of North Korea.

On April 26, nearly a month after Mr. Kim’s detention, the Chinese authorities allowed a South Korean consular officer to meet with him for 30 minutes. Chinese officials said the three other men had waived the right to consular services.

During the meeting, which took place with Chinese officials present, the consular officer asked Mr. Kim if he had been tortured or abused. Mr. Kim replied, “How can I discuss such things here?”

Requests for more consular meetings have since been denied, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Relations Tested in Case of South Korean Activist Detained in China. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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