hankyoreh

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

The ongoing controversy in the US over the seizure of Associated Press phone records by federal prosecutors is drawing renewed attention to the 2010 prosecution of Stephen Jin-woo Kim for violating the Espionage Act.

Evidence confirming that US investigators examined the phone records of a Fox News reporter who was in contact with Kim suggests that the recent press freedom violations were not the first.

Kim, a 46-year-old former North Korean nuclear expert with the US Department of State, is still locked in a solitary legal battle with federal prosecutors.

In a May 20 front-page story, the Washington Post reported the investigation authorities responsible for Kim’s case obtained not only the Fox News reporter’s phone records but also emails and records of Justice Department visits. Abbe Lowell, an attorney representing Kim, told the newspaper that the events of the recent AP case “show an expansion of this law enforcement technique.”

At the time that the incident occurred, Kim was working for the US State Department as a senior analyst in charge of verification, compliance, and implementation information. He was staff at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a US national nuclear research institute. In May 2009, immediately after North Korea carried out its second nuclear test, Kim was asked by the chief of public relations at the State Department to explain the North Korean issue to James Rosen, a Fox News reporter.

After that, Kim communicated with Rosen on the phone and exchanged emails with him. Fox News reported on June 11, 2009, that the CIA had learned from an intelligence agent inside North Korea that the North would respond to the UN resolution by carrying out an additional nuclear test or missile launch. This was the sort of guess that anyone who was interested in North Korea could have made at the time.

But federal prosecutors claimed that the article had been based on classified information. They alleged that Kim had been the source of the leak and indicted him in Aug. 2010 for violating the Espionage Act, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years. The information had been uploaded to the State Department’s classified information network the day that the article was published, prosecutors claimed. The prosecution labeled Rosen as an accomplice in the alleged crime.

Since then, Kim has been fighting US prosecutors in the courts. He posted a bail of US$100,000 and remains at liberty for the duration of the trial, but a court order prevents him from traveling more than 40km from his home.

Kim was interviewed by reporters from Bloomberg in Oct. 2012. “To be accused of doing something against or harmful to U.S. national interest is something I can’t comprehend,” Kim said. “Your reputation is shot and there is such a sense of shame brought on the family.”

The article by Bloomberg reported that Kim’s parents even sold their house in South Korea to help cover Kim’s legal fees. It is estimated that, by the time the trial is complete, it will have cost him more than US$1 million.

Kim came to the US with his parents in 1976. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and his master’s from Harvard, he graduated from Yale with a doctorate in military diplomacy and nuclear deterrence.

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