By Jun Ji-hye
Parties officially confirmed Monday that the National Archives of Korea (NAK) does not hold the original minutes and tape recordings of the 2007 South-North summit.
Lawmakers reported this at the National Assembly Steering Committee.
However, rival parties showed differences regarding who has to be blamed for the disappearance.
“We did everything to find out, but could not find the records. Lawmakers of both parties made conclusion that the NAK does not have the records,” said Rep. Hwang Jin-ha of the ruling Saenuri Party.
Rep. Woo Yoon-keun of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) said, however, “We found severe problems in the archives center’s way of managing important records. So we cannot surely say the late Roh Moo-hyun government did not transfer the records to the center.”
The confirmation of disappearance came hours after a team of four lawmakers, two each from the ruling party and the DP, visited the archives center in Seongnam for a final search, but failed to find the records.
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.
Parties initially planned to send 10 legislators from each major party. These were selected by the National Assembly to scrutinize the original summit minutes. But they later agreed to abandon the search after the four lawmakers, from among the original 10, confirmed that the records could not be found.
Both parties agreed early this month to unseal the presidential records to verify whether late President Roh Moo-hyun negated the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a de facto border line in the West Sea, during his talks with late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
However, the unexpected absence of the original records provoked fresh political strife over who was responsible for the disappearance of the records.
The ruling party called for the prosecution to investigate, concluding that the Roh Moo-hyun government did not hand in the summit records to the archives after Roh’s period in office ended in 2008.
Saenuri Party Floor Leader Choi Kyung-hwan explained the need to launch a prosecution investigation to establish the truth regarding the missing data.
“Lawmakers did everything to find the records, but still failed. The disappearance is a grave problem causing national disorder because it means that the nation is missing historical material,” said Choi. “The prosecution needs to launch a task force to sort out national confusion.”
On the other hand, the DP cast doubt over whether the Lee Myung-bak administration disposed of the records after politically utilizing them.
“The Lee government, which spoiled the National Intelligence Service (NIS), the National Police Agency, the Board of Audit and Inspection and media, also made a mess of the archives center,” said Rep. Shin Kyoung-min of the DP.
Rep. Kim Kwan-young, DP spokesman, argued that his party found traces that the Lee government unlocked “e-Jiwon,” the information management system used by the Roh administration, and logged in twice during 2010 and 2011.
Some DP members demanded that the case be investigated by special prosecutors.
The spokesman also called on lawmakers to immediately start scrutinizing part of the summit records that the archives center submitted to the Assembly last Thursday.
“The archives already submitted pre- and post-summit arrangements and other relevant documents. Lawmakers need to view these first if they sincerely want to clarify whether late Roh nullified the NLL.”
However, the ruling party said, without the original minutes and tape recordings, such scrutiny will be meaningless.
Instead, the Saenuri Party indicated that tape recordings stored in the NIS should be released, saying it will be the only way of checking what Roh said to late Kim Jong-il.