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| Former Industry Minister Paik Un-gyu / Newsis |
Three industry ministry officials were given suspended prison terms Monday for deleting documents related to the Wolsong-1 nuclear reactor in order to obstruct a state audit into the ministry's undervaluing of the reactor's viability under the preceding administration's nuclear phase-out policy.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy came under investigation after the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) concluded in 2020 that the ministry and state firms unreasonably undervalued the economic viability of the country's second-oldest nuclear reactor.
Following the economic assessment, state-run nuclear energy agency Korea Hydro Nuclear Power (KHNP) decided to shut down Wolsong-1 in 2018, years earlier than scheduled, a result seen in line with the then Moon Jae-in government's broader energy policy to phase out the use of nuclear energy.
The three ministry officials ― a 56-year-old bureau chief and two lower-level officials ― were accused of ordering the deletion of industry documents connected to the reactor or removing a pile of relevant data in 2019 right before the BAI's inspection kicked off.
The Daejeon District Court sentenced the bureau chief to a one-year prison term, suspended for two years, while handing out an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, to the other two.
The court ruled the accused obstructed the BAI's inspection by withdrawing or deleting documents requested by the BAI, eventually delaying the inspection by about seven months.
Currently, former Industry Minister Paik Un-gyu, a former KHNP chief and a former presidential secretary are standing trial on charges of abuse of power and abetting dereliction of duty in connection with Wolsong-1's shutdown. (Yonhap)
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