Yeo Joon Yoon (Director)
Yeo Joon Yoon is a seasoned politician whose life path walks parallel with modern Korean history. His professional experience, which starts from 1966, pans media, public service and politics. He occupied a number of public posts, including the Blue House Office of the Press Secretary, the Minister of Environment, and South Korean representative for Inter-Korean Summit. As a member of the 16th National Assembly via proportional representation (Grand National Party), he has served in major leadership roles such as the President of the Youido Institute, and the Chairperson of the Election Planning Committee. Since 2004, he has left politics and is dedicated to giving back to society what he has received. He currently heads the Peace Education Center of the Peace Foundation and the Korea Local Development Institute.
Sung Suh (Co-Chair, Steering Committee for the 2012 Hapcheon Anti-Nuclear & Peace Festival)
Professor Sung Suh, a renowned human rights activist and a former South Korean political prisoner, serves as Director at the Ritsumeikan Center for Korean Studies, in Japan. While studying at Seoul National University in the spring of 1971, he was abducted by South Korean military police and charged with participation in a North Korean campus spy ring. He was sentenced to death, but was later condemned to life imprisonment. In 1990, he was deemed a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, and was "temporarily released" from prison. Three years later, his release was made permanent. But it was not until 1999 that he regained the civil rights that had been officially suspended when he was first released from prison. Since his release, he has campaigned against unjust laws in South Korea and a variety of causes around the globe. Professor Suh is the author of <Unbroken Spirits: Nineteen Years in South Korea’s Gulag> (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), a memoir of his 19 years as a political prisoner in South Korea.