Ex-President Roh Had Blacklist of Civilians
By Yoon Won-sup
Staff Reporter
The military security command had a political blacklist of civilians that could face arrests at any time under the administration of former President Roh Tae-woo, according to a report.
A committee commissioned to look at the hidden history of the military by the Defense Ministry announced Tuesday that its members confirmed the command, named later Defense Security Command, had made a list of 923 civilians for prompt arrest in 1989.
The list was made in the first half of 1989 when Roh was likely to proclaim martial law across the nation. The command planned to arrest the civilians on the proclamation of the martial law.
People on the list were mostly politicians, civic group leaders and left wing sympathizers and their personal information was also recorded in detail.
The command classified the civilians into several groups according to the level of their anti-government characteristics based on data given by police and the prosecution.
Personal information of those people is still preserved in the Defense Security Command, the committee said.
The panel also said that former Presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, who were then the most influential opposition party leaders, were omitted from the list. President Roh Moo-hyun, who then helped a private's whistle-blowing of the military wrongdoings, was also omitted in the data.
Meanwhile, the blacklist preserved in the nation's democratization library, which includes incumbent President Roh, said his activities were recorded every month through agents.
The command saw the nation in crisis in 1988 when the opposition parties dominated the National Assembly and Rev. Mun Ik-hwan visited Pyongyang without government permission. So it was preparing for martial law, according to the panel.
But the committee said it couldn't verify who ordered the making of the list but explained that it considered the list as part of justifiable work by the command.
Meanwhile, civic groups showed discontent over the report by the committee because it failed to find who were responsible for the bloody crackdown in the democratic uprising on May 18, 1980.
The committed said that its members could just guess who ordered the military's violent crackdown due to the lack of concrete proof. They meant former President Chun Doo-hwan as he said the crackdown was conducted for self-defense.