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Roh aides silence fuels summit mystery
Rep. Hwang Jin-ha, center, of the ruling Saenuri Party, speaks to reporters at the National Assembly, Wednesday, calling for the prosecution’s investigation into the missing minutes of the 2007 South-North summit. The ruling party raised allegations that late President Roh Moo-hyun government disposed of the summit records. / Yonhap
By Jun Ji-hye
By Jun Ji-hye
Former key aides of late President Roh Moo-hyun are maintaining silence regarding the missing transcript from the 2007 inter-Korean summit, triggering speculation that is further aggravating conflict and tension surrounding the issue.
Following official confirmation by the National Assembly Monday that the National Archives of Korea do not hold the minutes of dialogue between Roh and late Northern leader Kim Jong-il, the ruling Saenuri Party has raised objections that the Roh administration disposed of the presidential material.
However, Roh’s former aides who were involved in the summit and managed the minutes have not commented on the missing data.
Moon Jae-in, a former presidential candidate of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), issued a statement, Tuesday, calling for an end to the Northern Limit Line (NLL) controversy, but did not specifically mention the missing transcripts.
Rep. Ha Tae-keung of the ruling party criticized Moon, Wednesday.
“Moon is not a person qualified to ask for the end of the NLL dispute,” Ha said.
Ha recalled Moon’s election campaign last December when he said: “I conducted the final supervision for the minutes and definitely transferred them to the Lee Myung-bak government.”
Moon, who served as chief of staff under the Roh government, was chairman of a task force at Cheong Wa Dae tasked with preparing for the 2007 summit.
“As a person who ‘finally supervised the records,’ Moon must show responsible behavior regarding missing historical material,” said Ha.
Two contradictory comments made by Cho Myung-kyun, former secretary for national security affairs in Roh’s Cheong Wa Dae, came on Tuesday.
The conservative local daily, The Donga-ilbo, quoted Cho as saying, “Roh ordered me to dispose of the minutes in ‘e-Jiwon,’ an information management system used by the Roh administration.” The daily reported Cho told this the prosecutor in January.
Hours later, the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation called the reports “irresponsible fiction,” and claimed Roh never ordered the destruction and that Cho never made those comments on the prosecution.
Cho Myung-kyun attended the summit in Oct. 3, 2007 in Pyongyang. His job was to manage the minutes.
Despite conflicting claims from both sides, Cho has so far kept silent.
Kim Man-bok, former National Intelligence Service (NIS) director during Roh’s regime, said earlier this month that the agency under him produced the transcripts based on tape recordings that the presidential office gave in October 2007 immediately following the summit between the two late leaders.
He claimed, “The front page of the minutes that the present NIS released on June 24 states that the transcripts were produced in January 2008,” strongly indicating that the NIS-released material appears to have been edited.
However, after his signature was found on the material, Kim took a step backward saying “I have a dim memory.”
From then, he is keeping his mouth shut as well.
These people including Moon Jae-in actively expressed their stances when the NIS released the agency-kept summit minutes late June and the ruling Saenuri Party argued that Roh offered to abandon the NLL.
When it was first revealed that lawmakers failed to find the original minutes at the archives center last week, former authorities working for the Roh administration strongly claimed that they transferred the records to the archives center for sure.
But people directly related to the 2007 summit are now maintaining silence and the ruling party shows no sign of dropping the matter, calling for the prosecution to investigate.