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| Noh Young-min, former presidential chief of staff under Moon Jae-in / Newsis |
DPK claims prosecution's attempted raid on party headquarters is part of political retaliation
By Jung Min-ho
Former presidential chief of staff Noh Young-min was questioned Wednesday over his role in repatriating two North Korean fishermen against their will in 2019 as prosecutors expand their investigation into who gave the final order.
This comes a day after prosecutors asked judges to issue arrest warrants for former Defense Minister Suh Wook and former Coast Guard Commissioner General Kim Hong-hee under the previous Moon Jae-in administration on charges of deleting intelligence reports in an effort to frame as a defector a fisheries official, who was killed by North Korea in 2020.
Noh, who held the post between January 2019 and December 2020, is a key figure believed to know whether Moon was directly involved in both cases as former top officials under him are being investigated for alleged abuse of power and destruction of evidence among other crimes.
On Nov. 2, 2019, South Korea's Navy captured the fishermen in waters off the nation's east coast. After a three-day investigation, officials determined that the two had conspired with a third person to murder 16 people and were on the run and sent them back to North Korea on Nov. 7. Their fishing boat ― the most critical evidence of their alleged crimes ― was disinfected and returned a day later.
According to the National Intelligence Service's first report sent to the Office of National Security, the fishermen, in a written statement, expressed a desire to defect to South Korea.
The ruling People Power Party, which filed a complaint against Noh with the prosecution in August, believes a prompt and coordinated effort to deport the fishermen began following a meeting he presided over at the presidential office on Nov. 4, 2019. In a report the spy agency sent to the Ministry of Unification that day, there were no words suggesting their intention to defect to the South. Investigators are looking into who was behind the change.
There is little question that the fishermen did not want to return to North Korea. The photos released by the Yoon Suk-yeol administration in July showed them resisting as South Korean officials handed them over to North Korea at the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom.
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| Prosecutors and staff of Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office gather in front of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea's (DPK) headquarters in Seoul, Wednesday, after their attempted raid was met with severe resistance from DPK members. Yonhap |
On Friday, the Seoul Central District Court will hold a hearing to decide whether to approve arrest warrants for Suh and Kim on charges of removing intelligence reports containing clues as to how the fisheries official ended up in North Korea's waters on Sept. 22, 2020.
According to the findings by the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI), the Ministry of Defense and Coast Guard deliberately ignored information suggesting that the official accidently fell from his boat. The state auditor found that he was wearing a life jacket emblazoned with Chinese characters. Given that the particular product is not traded in the South Korean market, the BAI said he may have received it from one of the Chinese fishing boats in the area. This information debunks the Moon administration's main argument that he, unlike other officials, was wearing a life jacket while on duty because he was getting ready to jump into the sea to defect to North Korea. The BAI confirmed Kim even told his officials that he would pretend he did not know that the official was wearing the unusual life jacket.
Investigators are focusing on finding out who made the final decision to delete the intelligence reports and what information was contained in them.
In a separate case, prosecutors attempted to raid the DPK's headquarters the same day, after detaining Kim Yong, vice president of its think tank located inside the building. DPK members blocked the investigators, claiming that the raid is nothing more than political retaliation against the opposition party.
DPK floor leader Park Hong-keun claimed that such a move is unprecedented. Park urged all DPK lawmakers to come to the party's headquarters to protest. The DPK also said they would boycott the National Assembly's audit.
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