by Mathilda Heller
David (Sung Mo) Chung was one of the key participants of the rally held on October 8, 2023, in New York, just a day after the Hamas massacre in Israel.
One of the lead organizers of pro-Palestine rallies in New York – David (Sung Mo) Chung – is paid $75,000 to protest, Nate Friedman first revealed in an investigation that he posted to his social media.
Friedman has been talking to people at protests for over a year, and now works to uncover professional protesters. He first came across Chung at a “Hands Off Iran” protest in NYC, he told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Thursday. Friedman was trying to speak to a man with a flag that read, “There is no god but Allah,” but just “two sentences into the interview, another man interrupted and pulled the guy aside, and told him they were getting ready to march.” The other man was Chung.
Friedman flagged this as “paid behavior” as the man with a flag had consented to speak, so there was no reason for the interview to be interrupted.
He looked into Chung and found that he is listed as General Manager of The People’s Forum organization, which, due to being a 501(c)(3) listed NGO, has publicly available financial filings. Its Form 990 for 2023 lists Chung as the one and only paid employee with compensation of $64,021 and “other” payments of $9,581. The other seven members, including the directors, are listed as $0. Chung was also listed the year before, with compensation of $64,588 and “other” of $10,019. The same thing is seen tracing back to 2018.
Originally from South Korea, he studied economics at City University of New York’s Hunter College.
Chung was one of the key participants of the rally held on October 8, 2023, in New York, just a day after the Hamas massacre in Israel. The rally “All Out For Palestine” was co-sponsored by The People’s Forum (TPF) and held in Times Square. Chung stood next to fellow People’s Forum member Layan Fuleihan as she chanted “Intifada! Intifada! Long live the Intifada!” Chung has also hosted classes on “Globalize the Intifada.”
Chung has been arrested multiple times for his protest actions, but was typically released the same day. This included an arrest during the “Shut It Down For Palestine” rally held at J. Hood Wright Park in New York City on January 20, 2024, along with other leaders of The People’s Forum.
The People’s Forum purports to be “a movement incubator for working-class and marginalized communities to build unity.” It has, however, expressed blatant support for Hamas, including on October 8 itself when TPF director Manolo De Los Santos released a statement saying, “When a government employs murderous violence to prevent an oppressed people from using non-violent forms of struggle, it inevitably leads to the use of armed resistance. That’s what we are witnessing today.”
NOTABLY, IN January 2024, a “Tax-Exempt Organization Complaint” was filed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against TPF, accusing De Los Santos and TPF of “advocating in support of a US-designated foreign terror organization, Hamas,” and advocating “for the overthrow of the US Government.”
“While De Los Santos and The People’s Forum have First Amendment rights to speak in favor of terrorism and destroying the United States, People’s Forum is a 501(c)(3) and its activities in support of Hamas and revolutionary acts to destroy the US violate 501(c)(3) rules on unlawful activity.”
The complaint also alleged that TPF has provided material support “to a US-designated foreign terror organization [Hamas].”
However, Friedman told the Post that while on the surface it seems the protests are about Palestine, it is really about socialism.
“They use anti-Zionism as a springboard for socialism and ‘downfall of American imperialism.’ They make protests about the end of Israel, genocide in Gaza, but you go to their hub and it’s all books about the success of socialism, classes about socialism.”
Friedman imagines that socialism is “too complicated a concept for a lot of people, but hating Israel is easy,” and that is how they mobilize support.
He told the Post that paying people to protest is needed for groups like The People’s Forum, as “in order to organize these protests, you have to be semi-competent, you need someone who is able to get permits.” Chung is such a person – “he does a good job figuring out locations and printing out all the signs,” said Friedman.
Friedman reiterated that the TPF rally was organized a day after October 7, which would require extreme mobilization. “And you can’t mobilize without paying people,” he said.
“The world deserves to know the truth that these protests are not organic, and they are not just about Israel,” he told the Post. “This is only the beginning of what [these left-wing NGOs] want to see develop. It’s not just anti-Israel, but anti-West.”
For Friedman, unveiling people such as Chung is about “trying to put a spotlight on the blatantly obvious strategy of advertising protests as being about ‘stop aid to Israel’ and it’s all about Marxism.”
Groups funded by China-based businessman
The ties between The People’s Forum and other similar groups and socialism go even further: The People’s Forum, as well as Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Coalition, and Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P), are funded by Maoist businessman Neville Roy Singham, who is based in Shanghai.Singham is currently being investigated by the US Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for his funding of “various extremist entities in the United States”.
The committee believes Singham to be supporting these groups “with the aim of causing destruction and division” in the US “on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).” It also believes that his “funding and control over certain far-left entities may violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), 22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq, and other federal laws.”
Both PSL and The People’s Forum have documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party through funding from Singham. In addition, Elias Rodriguez, who murdered two Israeli embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum, was a PSL member.
The intersection between pro-Palestinian activism in the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was extensively reported on by Program on Extremism in a July 2025 report.
Singham also funds another 501(c)(3) named Justice and Education Fund, a left-wing policy organization. Its principal office? David Chung.
Mathilda Heller
Source: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-863586
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