Moon's anti-corruption drive spreads to military

President Moon Jae-in's efforts to eradicate wrongdoings of the former governments are targeting military and defense sectors criticized for corruption and politically motivated moves including a case that the Cyber Command allegedly conducted online smear campaigns against liberals during the 2012 general and presidential elections. / Graphic by Cho Sang-won

By Jun Ji-hye

President Moon Jae-in has launched a campaign to "eradicate the deep-rooted evils" of the previous governments as the top priority of his political agenda.

Toward that end, state prosecutors have been looking into alleged irregularities under the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations, including the former's alleged attempt to control the media and conduct surveillance on civilians and political rivals.

The military, which has been criticized for alleged corruption and politically motivated moves, is no exception in the government's ongoing efforts for reformation.

The Cyber Command under the Ministry of National Defense has been already become a target of prosecutors' investigation over its alleged online smear campaigns against liberals during the 2012 general and presidential elections. Moon ran in the 2012 presidential poll as an opposition candidate and lost to Park by a small margin.

The documents acquired by the prosecution showed that at the time, the cyber warfare command reported its political activities to then-Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and to Cheong Wa Dae. Kim served as the defense minister under the Lee and Park governments, and later became Park's National Security Office chief. He has been banned from leaving the country owing to the investigation.

For his part, Defense Minister Song Young-moo told a National Assembly audit on Oct. 12 that he has ordered ministry officials to stop the process to promote those accused of being involved with the Cyber Command's activities and to treat them as suspects.

"I will work to completely reorganize the Cyber Command," Song said, vowing to conduct a thorough investigation into the case.

The improper activities of the Cyber Command, whose duty is to conduct psychological warfare on cyber space and prepare for North Korea's cyber terrorism, were not the only ones that have stirred up public uproar.

Habitual human rights violations and sexual abuses in military units have been also cited as chronic problems.

The latest case centered on Gen. Park Chan-ju, the former commander of the Army's 2nd Operations Command, and his wife, who had long exploited soldiers assigned to serve at his official residence.

Gen. Park and his wife were accused of not only forcing soldiers to do the laundry, ironing, gardening and cleaning, but also ordering them to draw the blinds in the bedroom and to pick up trash such as toenails and dead skin cells from the sofa and living room floor. Soldiers said the couple treated them like slaves. The general has been questioned by military prosecutors.

Expressing his regret over the case, President Moon urged the ministry "not to adopt stopgap measures just to remove the present controversy but to work to comprehensively improve the whole system."

President Moon has also vowed to scrutinize corruption allegations surrounding major defense projects of the previous administrations, including the 7.3 trillion won ($6.43 billion) F-X project, in which Seoul decided to buy 40 Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighters as the Republic of Korea Air Force's next-generation fighters.

Some lawmakers, including Rep. Kim Jong-dae of the minor opposition Justice Party, have consistently raised the allegations that U.S. defense company Lockheed Martin benefited from favoritism from the South Korean military when it won the contract in 2014 over Boeing.

The decision to buy F-35s, led by former Defense Minister Kim, has also caused enormous controversy, as it was belatedly known that the nation failed to receive four core F-35-related technologies from Lockheed Martin owing to the government's bungled management of the offset program. The technologies were core to the KF-X project to develop Korean-made fighters.

President Moon, then serving as opposition leader, said Kim Kwan-jin and Cheong Wa Dae made a "political decision" that brought enormous damage to the nation.

In line with the government's move to reform defense sector, the state-run Board of Audit and Inspection is currently investigating the controversial F-X project.

President Moon's order in August for a special probe into the 1980 military junta's violent crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners in Gwangju is another example of the government's efforts to eradicate deep-rooted evils.

Presidential spokesman Park Soo-hyun said the investigation led by the defense ministry is targeting the two allegations that the military led by then an Army general Chun Doo-hwan , ordered soldiers to fire at citizens using machine guns from helicopters and that the military considered ordering fighter jets to bomb the city.

Anti-corruption task force

On Oct. 16, the Ministry of National Defense officially launched a committee to resolve the epidemic of corruption and map out reform plans.

Kang Ji-won, a well-known human rights lawyer who ran in the 2012 presidential election, was appointed as the chairman of the 10-member committee.

Kang is the husband of Kim Young-ran, the former chief of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission who initiated the influential anti-graft law drive in 2011.

"The committee plans to address the problems involving the Cyber Command's alleged online smear campaigns and human rights violations and sexual abuses in military units, as well as the formation of improper fraternities within the military," a ministry official said on condition of anonymity. "The committee will form sub-committees in accordance with such issues."

Opposition parties: Campaign is "political revenge"

The main opposition Liberty Korea Party and the minor opposition Bareun Party have criticized the Moon government's move to reform the military and defense sectors, saying the committee is comprised of left-leaning members.

The conservative parties claimed that the composition of the members showed the Moon administration's intention to carry out "political revenge" against the former conservative governments under the name of addressing accumulated wrongdoings.

The parties said Moon's priority should be resolving problems that have occurred since the launch of his government, such as North Korea's repeated nuclear and missile provocations and the U.S. pressure to renegotiate the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.

"The Moon government has failed to answer the people's question about how to cope with the North's nuclear threats," said Rep. Joo Ho-young, the floor leader of the minor opposition Bareun Party.

Joo added that it is improper to fill a committee tasked with rooting out accumulated wrongdoings with figures that have ties to the incumbent government.