'Presidential office secretly monitored Supreme Court chief's private life'
By Park Si-soo
The Presidential office looked into the private lives of Supreme Court Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae and other senior judges, including their recreational activities and people they met, a former CEO of Korea’s vernacular daily Segye Ilbo claimed on Thursday, citing leaked classified presidential documents.
Cho Han-gyu dropped the bombshell during a parliamentary investigation of a corruption scandal involving President Park Geun-hye and her longtime friend Choi Soon-sil.
Cho made the claim without visible evidence to back it. But if it is true, it will constitute a serious violation of the Constitution that guarantees freedom of the judiciary.
Cho is believed to have eight classified presidential documents that the daily obtained exclusively in 2014. Based on some documents, the newspaper first shed light on the shadowy link between President Park and Choi in November 2014. That means there are documents that remain undisclosed.
Rep. Lee Hae-hoon of the ruling Saenuri Party asked Cho to tell about the “most important” part of the documents under Cho’s control. Cho said it is about “Cheong Wa Dae’s monitoring of Supreme Court Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae’s private life.”
The former CEO said the presidential office had “put the chief justice under the watchful eye, secretly monitoring Yang’s weekend hobby of mountain climbing and people he met in person.” Information about Choi Sung-joon, who was head of the Chuncheon District Court, was also included in the documents, he said.
Cho said he would tender documents containing intelligence about the two senior judges to the National Assembly. But he will keep the other documents secret.
Looking back, Cho said the documents' credibility is more than "90 percent."
Last month, the former CEO told an Internet talk show that “Park's criminal acts stipulated in the documents are grave enough to be considered a sort of rebellion.” He said: “If the documents are revealed to the public, the country's democracy will be under a cloud internationally.”
When Segye Ilbo broke the news about the cozy ties between the President and Choi in November 2014, the presidential office vehemently denied them, taking legal action against the newspaper and demanding that Cho, then the daily’s CEO, quit to take responsibility for spreading “groundless and defamatory” information.
Police officer Park Guan-chun leaked the documents to the daily. And the officer reportedly told prosecutors responsible for investigating the leak that ”President Park is third in the chain of command, while Choi Soon-sil is at the top and her husband Chung Yoon-hoi ranks second.”