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Final search for summit minutes due today
Lawmakers and private experts sit in the National Archives of Korea in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, Sunday, searching for the original minutes and tape recordings of the 2007 inter-Korean summit. Lawmakers will carry out a final search today to reach a conclusion on whether the records exist. / Yonhap
By Jun Ji-hye
By Jun Ji-hye
A team of ten lawmakers, five each from the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic Party, will today conduct a final search for the original minutes of the 2007 inter-Korean summit at the National Archives of Korea in Seongnam.
On basis of their search, they are scheduled to clarify at the National Assembly meeting whether the records in question are in the archives or not.
Parties did not stop a task to search out the records even during the weekend. Four lawmakers visited the archives center Sunday for this job. They are Reps. Hwang Jin-ha, Cho Myung-chul of the ruling party, and Reps. Park Nam-choon and Jeon Hae-cheol of the DP.
The ongoing search is aimed at verifying whether the late President Roh Moo-hyun nullified the Northern Limit Line (NLL) during a meeting with the late northern leader Kim Jong-il, a bone of political contention.
But now, it is opening a new front in the partisan dispute about whether the Roh administration didn’t provide the records as required under the law.
Lawmakers failed to find the original minutes and tapes in the archives twice last week.
The NLL is a de facto border line in the West Sea drawn by the United Nations Command after the armistice treaty of 1953 at the end of the Korean War.
If the disappearance is confirmed, the ruling party is expected to point the finger at the opposition. Rep. Min Hyun-joo, spokeswomen of the ruling party, said: “There are suspicions that Roh ordered his aides to dispose of the records or to move them to Roh’s hometown, Bongha Village, Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province.”
On the other hand, the DP, which insists Roh’s presidential records were definitely transferred to the archives center following his resignation, will likely pass the buck to the former conservative government of President Lee Myung-bak.
On Thursday, Lim Sang-kyung, first head of the NAK-affiliated Presidential Archives under the Roh administration, and two other aides held a press conference.
“Former President Lee drove Roh-related officials including Lim out of the archives center right after he took power and placed his close aide in the position,” they said in a statement.
The three argued that it is suspected that the Lee administration “took over the center” could have disposed of the confidential records or used them for the presidential campaign.
Ultimately, a prosecution investigation seems inevitable to clarify who was responsible for the disappearance of the confidential information.
Tape recordings stored in the National Intelligence Service (NIS) will be another hot potato because, without the original records and tapes kept at the archives, NIS-stored tapes will be the only way of verifying the details of Roh’s dialogue with the late Kim Jong-il.
Former government employees who worked for Roh said Cheong Wa Dae previously used an information management system called “e-Jiwon,” and they transferred presidential records in accordance with this system. The archives center is currently using a different system called “PAMS.” So the theory goes that the discrepancy can explain the failure to find the records.