hankyoreh

general consul at the South Korean consulate in Shenyang

By Lee Seung-jun, staff reporter

A witness in the Yoo Woo-sung espionage case testified in the National Assembly that two of the three documents submitted by prosecutors as records of the onetime Seoul city employee’s trips to North Korea were not received directly from Chinese security authorities by the South Korean consulate in Shenyang.


The two documents were also reported to be personal documents obtained from an unidentifiable source by a consular officer for overseas citizen protection - and known National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent – Lee In-cheol.
In a testimony at a hearing the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee on Feb. 21, Cho Baek-sang, general consul at the South Korean consulate in Shenyang, China, answered “no” when asked whether the consulate had acquired the document by contacting or telephoning civil servants in Helong. 
“Since the documents acquired by the relevant intelligence organization were all in Chinese, this was a private document where the consul in charge [Lee] translated the gist of it and verified that it was accurate,” Cho said.


Cho later said “yes” when asked by Democratic Party (DP) lawmaker Woo Sang-ho whether Lee was “the one who actually received the document,” but added, “Lee didn’t ask for the actual document issued by Chinese authorities, but confirmed, in Korean, what was in the documents provided by the relevant authorities [in China].”


Cho also testified to hearing a “report after the fact” from Lee.
The two documents at issue in Yoo’s ongoing espionage trial are a purported record of his transit between North Korea and China and a reply confirmation for a statement of circumstances submitted by his counsel. If true, Cho’s account lends further weight to claims that they were falsified. It also suggests that the next step in identifying the initial source will mean questioning Lee.


Lee is reportedly an NIS agent and works as a consul for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But despite repeated questioning from DP lawmaker Jung Cheong-rae on whether Lee was an NIS agent or a member of the NIS anticommunist investigation team, Cho refused to answer, answering only that he was “not at liberty to say.”


Cho also testified having learned about the document’s falsification only after allegations surfaced, and said the “issuance certificate” for Yoo’s border crossing record was received from Chinese authorities by the general consulate at the prosecution’s request.
He also suggested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs bore no responsibility for the falsification.
“The consul in charge [Lee] said it was accurate, and the general consulate is not in a position to verify the authenticity,” he said.
“We verified later that the two documents went [to prosecutors] through the government mission,” he added.


DP lawmakers focused heavily on the question of whether the NIS may have falsified the documents. Woo cited the possibility that “either Chinese authorities did not produce the documents, that the consul Lee produced them himself, or that they were produced by someone in China at Lee’s request.”
Jung echoed the claims of NIS involvement, noting that the relevant security official in Helong claimed never to have issued the documents.


Meanwhile, a source at the Chinese embassy in Seoul said the government in Beijing finished its investigation and concluded the documents had indeed been falsified. This marks the first response from the embassy since it caused a stir on Feb. 17 with an official document to the South Korean government claiming that three of the documents submitted by prosecutors were falsified.


According to accounts from reliable diplomatic sources in Seoul on Feb. 21, a diplomat in the Chinese embassy in Seoul took issue with South Korean prosecutors claiming that Beijing had not ruled the documents falsified.
“They’ve already been ruled falsified,” sources reported the diplomat as saying.

“We [the embassy] sent two versions of the documents submitted by South Korean prosecutors and Yoo’s defense attorney to Beijing, and a month later we sent official notice to the South Korean court after receiving word from the Chinese government that their investigation found the documents submitted by prosecutors to be forgeries.”


The diplomat was also quoted as saying the notice was issued because “China needs South Korea’s help to find the person or people involved in the falsification.”

“The Chinese government called them ‘falsification,’” the diplomat was quoted as saying. “You can read that as literal.”

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]