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From left to right: Park Jie-won, former director of the National Intelligence Service; Suh Hoon, former director of the Blue House National Security Office; and Suh Wook, former defense minister.

South Korean prosecutors carried out simultaneous raids on the properties of three top figures from the previous administration as part of an investigation into the killing of a South Korean public servant by North Korea in 2020. Prosecutors raided the homes and offices of Park Jie-won, former director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS); Suh Hoon, former director of the Blue House National Security Office; and Suh Wook, former minister of national defense.

For more than a month now, prosecutors have been piecing together the facts of the case by questioning witnesses as part of an open investigation. This round of raids suggests that they’ll now move forward with their investigation into the top levels of the administration of former President Moon Jae-in.

The first public investigation division at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, led by Lee Hui-dong, sent a team of prosecutors and investigators on Tuesday morning to search the homes and offices of various decision-makers who dealt with the handling of the death of a public servant in the Yellow Sea. Ten or so locations were raided, including the offices of the Coast Guard, a unit under the Ministry of National Defense, and other workplaces of the figures under investigation.

The prosecutors are investigating how the Ministry of National Defense and the Coast Guard came to announce that Lee Dae-jun, then a public servant with the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, had been attempting to defect to North Korea after he was killed in North Korean waters in September 2020.

On July 6, the NIS asked the prosecution service to investigate Park Jie-won, the service’s former director, for the unauthorized deletion of intelligence reports about the incident, which would constitute abuse of authority under the National Intelligence Service Korea Act. Suh Hoon and Suh Wook were also the subjects of criminal complaints filed with the prosecutors on July 8 by Lee’s surviving family members, who accuse them of abusing their authority and damaging public electronic records.

On July 13, one week after receiving the criminal complaint from the NIS, prosecutors began their investigation by seizing related documents during a raid of the NIS.

Current NIS Director Kim Kyou-hyun informed the National Assembly that he had briefed President Yoon Suk-yeol about filing a criminal complaint against the former NIS director.

Sources linked to the prosecutors think that the spree of raids on Tuesday signals that the investigation is beginning to zero in on high-ranking officials, with the additional goal of drumming up fading public interest in the case.

Earlier, the NIS took the unusual step of outlining the specific charges in the criminal complaint filed against Park, who had served as NIS director right before Kim.

According to sources, the series of simultaneous search and seizures — coming after over a month of a public investigation — have less to do with acquiring additional evidence than with laying the procedural groundwork for transitioning to an investigation of high-ranking officials from the Moon administration.

“The likelihood that key information remains on mobile phones or other devices is virtually nil. Since [prosecutors] have already received material from the agencies in question and made considerable progress in questioning witnesses, [the raids] basically indicate that the investigation is moving on to the upper levels [of the Moon administration],” said an attorney who formerly worked as a prosecutor in charge of national security cases.

Park told local news broadcaster YTN shortly after prosecutors raided his home on Tuesday that the raid took less than half an hour. “[Prosecutors] took my mobile phone and five planners containing my schedule. If I gave orders for the NIS servers to be wiped, why would they need to raid my house? They’re trying to frighten and humiliate me,” the former NIS director said.

As soon as they finish analyzing the items seized in the raids, prosecutors intend to call in the main figures in the case — including Park, Suh Hoon and Suh Wook — for questioning about how the government reached the conclusion that Lee was defecting.

By Kang Jae-gu, staff reporter

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