ED Tell nothing but truth
Ex-spy chiefs under probe over cover-up attempts
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) on Wednesday filed a complaint with the prosecution against two of its former chiefs over suspicions that they mishandled two separate incidents involving North Korea. The move is drawing keen attention as it offers an opportunity for the law enforcement agency to get to the bottom of the incidents.
The figures facing investigation are Park Jie-won and Suh Hoon, who served as spy chiefs under the previous Moon Jae-in administration. The NIS has accused Park of unlawfully deleting intelligence-related reports regarding North Korean soldiers' killing of a South Korean fisheries official in 2020. It has also raised allegations against Suh that he ordered an early end to a probe into the case of two North Korean fishermen who were sent back to the North in November 2019 after being captured in the East Sea when they crossed the inter-Korean maritime border.
It marks the second time that the NIS has requested the prosecution to investigate its former chiefs. The first case occurred in 2011 when the agency lodged a complaint against Kim Man-bok who had allegedly revealed state secrets in his memoir. The prosecution's investigation is necessary to shed light on widespread suspicions that the previous government had mobilized the spy agency to cover up its mishandling of the two incidents in a bid to appease the Kim Jong-un regime to push for Moon's engagement policy.
Park, a longtime liberal politician, should now cooperate with the prosecution to lay bare the truth behind the horrific incident, in which fisheries official Lee Dae-jun, 47, was shot to death by the North's military on Sept. 22, 2020, a day after going missing while on duty aboard a fishery inspection boat. According to the NIS, Park allegedly abused his authority to destroy some intelligence reports in order to help conclude that Lee was attempting to defect to the North, despite a set of facts indicating that he was drifting into North Korean waters.
The mystery surrounding Lee's death has now attracted the spotlight since the Ministry of National Defense and the Coast Guard overturned their previous conclusions last month, saying that there was no evidence corroborating the defection allegations. Moon and former presidential officials are facing allegations that they instructed the spy agency, the defense ministry and the Coast Guard to manipulate evidence so as to define Lee's case as “voluntary defection.”
Park should tell nothing but the truth. However, it is disappointing that he categorically denied all the allegations raised against him. He even argued that the NIS complaint against him is political retaliation by the new Yoon Suk-yeol administration. It is also frustrating that the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has denounced the Yoon government for targeting former President Moon.
Park and the DPK should not try to turn the incident into a politically contentious issue in order to block the investigation. They should realize that the previous government's alleged manipulation and cover-up attempts could be serious crimes trampling on human rights as well as putting national security at risk.