By Lee Kyung-min
A senior former prosecutor who supervised the questioning of former President Roh Moo-hyun said an intelligence agency chief under former Lee Myung-bak masterminded a plan to set him up for a fall, a move to switch blame from the prosecution onto the now-cornered agency over the death of the liberal leader. Roh, who had a deep relationship with President Moon Jae-in, committed suicide in May 2009 during the investigation. Allegations had been made that his family received about $6 million from a businessman named Park Yeon-cha in return for favors. One claim, that the former first lady received a luxury wristwatch and threw it away in a rice paddy, was widely believed to have triggered Roh's suicide.
Lee In-kyu, a former prosecutor at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, accused broadcaster SBS, which reported the alleged conspiring of the prosecution with the National Intelligence Service (NIS), sowing the possibility of a legal battle between the two over defamation. Lee said former NIS chief Won Sei-hoon asked then-Prosecutor General Lim Chae-jin to make the highly damaging bribery allegations public through media reports to “shame” him. “Such advances forwarded by Won's juniors were rejected,” the ex-prosecutor, who is currently in the U.S., said in an email sent to reporters.
Watching the allegations on the news left Lee enraged given his clear objection, he added. “I was having dinner with the then-interior vice minister, a high school friend of Won. I asked him to tell Won I felt deeply disappointed and frustrated for carrying out the plan, over which I berated NIS officials for even thinking about the pursuit.”
Lee said he would willingly undergo questioning over the allegations he raised, adding he continues to maintain such a stance denying any personal involvement _ by extension the prosecution _ in the smear campaign against Roh.
Many believed Roh faced what liberals dubbed “harsh and dehumanizing” questioning led by Lee's immediate junior Woo Byung-woo, the corruption-ridden former presidential secretary for civil affairs in the later Park Geun-hye administration. Woo “infamously” said, “You are not here as a former president, nor are you here as my senior colleague for passing the state-administered bar exam. You are nothing but a suspected criminal sitting here over a bribery allegation.”
SBS, which Lee claimed was behind the report concerning the alleged bribe involving Roh's wife, said it will file both a criminal and civil suit. A reform committee under the NIS said last year the agency under the leadership of Won did come up with the idea to use the bribery allegation to shame Roh, but concluded it took no specific actions.