hankyoreh

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) was confirmed on Wednesday to have wiretapped and caught the information that North Korea was planning to shell five islands in the West Sea three months before the attack. Their response, however, was sloppy. With this new admission, the people’s blame on Lee Myung-bak government and South Korean military for their overall incompetence is likely to rise.

In a meeting of the National Assembly Intelligence Committee, NIS Director Won Sei-hoon answered, “Yes,” to the lawmakers’ question of whether the NIS knew that North Korea ordered its military to prepare for artillery attack on the five islands from intercepting a North Korean military communication last August, according to the committee members. Won said the NIS submitted the intelligence report to President Lee Myung-bak.

Won was quoted as saying, “Since North Korea was constantly making such threats, the military anticipated North Korea’s shelling on the waters south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL).”

Won said it was difficult to intercept North Korean military communications before and on the day of attack, as North Korea used landlines instead of wireless communication.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet with her South Korean and Japanese counterparts early next week to discuss ways to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the State Department said Wednesday.

The three-way meeting here Monday will “discuss the recent developments on the Korean Peninsula and their impact on regional security as well as other regional and global issues,” spokesman Philip Crowley said. “This demonstrates the close coordination between the United States, the Republic of Korea and Japan and our commitment to security in the Korean Peninsula and stability in the region.”

(Yonhap News Agency)

Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn was summoned Wednesday as a witness in a prosecution investigation into alleged slush fund for lobbying and embezzlement, but he denied all suspects, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors asked Kim, 58, whether he is the actual owner of some 69 billion Won ($59.8 million) kept in accounts registered under other people’s names and whether he forced the nation’s 10th-largest conglomerate group to illegally lend as much as 1.3 trillion Won to its subsidiaries and subcontractors.

Meanwhile, Chun Shin-il, Chairman of Sejoong Namo Tour and a longtime friend of President Lee Myung-bak, turned himself in to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office for being investigated of some 400 million bribery allegations.

The Seoul Family Court Wednesday allowed North Koreans to claim their inheritance of more than $8 million by confirming that a rich man, who died in 1987, was their biological father.

It is the first verdict that granted North Koreans the right to vie with children of the same father in South Korea over the family inheritance.

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