By Yi Whan-woo
Cheong Wa Dae said Thursday it found an electronic document showing that the presidential office under former President Park Geun-hye fabricated the time she first received a report on the deadly Sewol ferry disaster in 2014.
The presidential office said it also discovered separate documents that contain evidence of the Park government illegally changing the guidelines on dealing with a national crisis after its bungled rescue efforts.
Political sources speculated that the changes were an effort to cover up Park’s incompetence.
The revelation comes amid unresolved questions over the former president’s failure to deal with the country’s worst maritime disaster on April 16, 2014. Over 300 passengers, mostly high school students on a school trip, were killed.
It also comes as the Seoul Central District Court is considering whether to extend the detention of Park, who is on trial for corruption after being ousted in March because of an influence-peddling scandal.
The detention is set to expire, Monday.
President Moon Jae-in’s chief of staff Im Jong-seok said Cheong Wa Dae will ask for a “thorough” investigation of the documents, adding “the truth must be upheld without fail.”
The electronic document found Wednesday show that Park first received a report from her chief of staff and chief bodyguard at 9:30 a.m. after the ferry capsized at 8:58 a.m., according to Im.
She then ordered measures to deal with the incident at 10: 15 a.m.
But the Park government later changed the log and claimed that she received the report at 10 a.m., 30 minutes late than she actually did.
“The Park government even posted on its website that 10 a.m. was when she was briefed about the incident,” Im said.
“The reason they pushed back the time of the first report to the president by half an hour appears to have been an attempt to reduce the time between it and Park’s first order. We believe the government at the time intentionally changed the log, given that every single minute was critical back then.”
In a separate finding, the documents discovered inside a cabinet showed the Park government illegally changing the guidelines on national crises. Such a change requires consent from the Ministry of Government Legislation but the relevant steps were completely ignored, according to Im.
The guidelines initially stated that the chief of Cheong Wa Dae’s National Security Office (NSO) would serve as the control tower in the event of a national disaster.
But under the order of then-NSO chief Kim Kwan-jin in July 2014, the guidelines were modified and stated that the now-disbanded Ministry of Security and Public Administration would be responsible for handling a disaster.
“We found evidence that the guidelines were changed in a systematic manner,” Im said.
The sources expect that Kim may face an investigation by the prosecution.