In some ways, the ongoing controversy over a defector-turned-spy-suspect case looks like becoming the Alfred Dreyfus trial of 21st-century Korea.
Like the French officer of Jewish origin more than a century ago, the accused, Yoo Woo-sung, is a minority in this country ― a North Korean defector of Chinese origin. As the French authorities did, there are also signs that Korea’s law enforcement officers ― the prosecution and state spy agency ― played a role in driving the suspect into a corner with fabricated evidence.
A Chinese provincial government has already made it clear that all three documents allegedly showing Yoo’s travel records between China and North Korea, presented by the prosecution as evidence to back up its charges, were fabricated.
At stake then is who forged them, and for what? Chinese officials seem to be uncertain about that until they finish their investigation, and reportedly have requested that Korean officials cooperate with their probe.
What is hard to understand in this regard is the response of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), which has remained silent except for its initial denial of an involvement in the matter or knowledge about it. But Korea’s consul general in Shenyang told the National Assembly last week that an NIS officer working in his mission authenticated two of the three forged documents.
Moreover, it was August when Yoo was acquitted in a lower court because there was a lack of evidence, except for his sister’s testimony made under the spy agency’s coercion that the NIS officer was dispatched to the consulate general. One can’t help but presume that the officer surnamed Lee might have acquired the documents through secret channels and had them signed to make them look official. Or, all this could be just presumption and his dispatch was only coincidence, as the NIS insinuates.
Either way, the public cannot find out the truth ― until the spy organization comes forth or the recalcitrant prosecution summons the officer in question and turns the current “inquiry” into a formal, and mandatory, “investigation.”
No less problematic are the attitudes of the governing Saenuri Party, some of whose members are bent on defending the NIS and justifying its dubious activities as overseas intelligence for national interests. We hope they are right, but cannot agree with them until more truths came out. If the NIS was involved in the forging of evidence and the prosecution used such material with or without knowing it, this case is a national disgrace, bringing into question, once again, the credibility of the its law enforcement process and hurting diplomatic ties with China.
In a worst case scenario, Koreans will be watching the human rights of another citizen trampled under administrative and judiciary expediency. The prolonged silence of President Park, who micromanages the administration ― ranging from textbook prices to a skater’s change of nationality ― also deepens popular suspicions.
Koreans thought that the “manufacturing of spies” was a thing of the 1970s and ’80s. It would be a big embarrassment to see that what happened in Europe in the late 19th century is occurring here today.