Central Prosecutor’s Office Public Investigation Division 1 and 3 Simultaneously Introduced… To secure evidence supporting the allegations of Park Ji-won and Seo Hoon
Jun-hwan Kim, the former 3rd deputy chief of ‘North Korea’ is also on the investigation line… After analyzing the data, the person concerned is expected to be summoned
Prosecutors searched and searched the National Intelligence Service on the 13th in connection with the ‘case of the murder of a public official in the West Sea’ and the ‘repatriation of North Korean fishermen to North Korea’.
According to the legal circles, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office sent prosecutors and investigators to the National Intelligence Service in Seocho-gu, Seoul on the afternoon of the day to conduct a search and seizure.
On this day, the 1st Public Investigation Division (Prosecutor Lee Hee-dong), which is investigating the murder of a public official in the West Sea, and the 3rd Public Investigation Division (Prosecutor Lee Jun-beom), which investigates the repatriation of North Korean fishermen from North Korea, were put together in the search and seizure.
It has been a week since the National Intelligence Service (NIS) filed a complaint with the prosecution against former NIS heads Park Ji-won and Seo-hoon on the 6th.
The search and seizure was carried out in a way that the NIS submitted data according to a warrant issued by the court.
Reports and information production/deletion records left on the NIS server, as well as the contents of messenger conversations exchanged between employees, are known to be the main targets of seizure.
Former Director Park is accused of deleting intelligence-related reports, etc. without permission (abuse of authority under the National Intelligence Service Act, damage to public electronic records, etc.)
Former Director Park is under suspicion of ordering the deletion of the report through the Chief of Staff, a close aide, when the National Intelligence Service wrote a report that emphasized the possibility of ‘drift’ rather than ‘voluntary defection’ of Mr. Lee.
Separately, former Director Suh is accused of prematurely shutting down the joint interrogation of defectors in the process of returning them to North Korea through Panmunjom, although two North Korean sailors killed 16 colleagues in November 2019 and expressed their intention to defect. , creating false official documents).
Kim Jun-hwan, former deputy chief of the National Intelligence Service (currently standing auditor of the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency), who was in charge of North Korea, was also accused of participating in the crimes of former director Seo.
The NIS suspects that former deputy chief Kim was involved in the process of forcibly repatriating fishermen to North Korea, deleting some expressions such as ‘willing to defect’ from the report prepared by the Ministry of Unification and halting the fishing boat site investigation plan.
Prosecutors are reported to have recently summoned NIS officials as whistleblowers to investigate the NIS’s accusations.
In addition, the 1st Public Investigation Division conducted a media briefing on the 16th of last month that overturned the possibility of Lee Dae-jun’s voluntary defection to North Korea, and on the 11th of this month, Yoon Hyung-jin, head of the policy planning department of the Defense Policy Office of the Ministry of National Defense, was summoned and investigated as a witness.
After analyzing the relevant data received from the National Intelligence Service on that day, the prosecution is expected to continue a full-scale subpoena investigation of former and current working-level officials and officials.
Former Director Park denies the allegations, refusing to have ordered the deletion of the report related to the case.
Director Seo is currently living in the United States.
Some observers predict that the investigation target will be expanded to high-ranking officials in the Blue House under the Moon Jae-in government depending on the degree of progress.
/yunhap news