hankyoreh

Kwon Hyuk-chul, Staff Writer　
　
The military’s excessive secrecy has become the topic of discussion after it came to light Monday that the Ministry of National Defense refused to provide a National Assembly member with public materials on grounds of confidentiality, even though the same materials had been posted openly on a web site.
In a press release Monday, minor opposition Democratic Labor Party (DLP) Chairwoman Lee Jung-hee said that the ministry refused to provide a document on grounds of secrecy, even though the same document had been posted on the Public Procurement Service (PPS) web site.
“The Ministry of National Defense lied,” Lee contended.
Lee requested a copy of a document titled “Service Task Directive for (Provisional) Reverted USFK Base Asset Revaluation” from the Ministry of National Defense on Jan. 19. She reported that her goal was to examine how tax money would be used for the USFK base relocation effort. The Defense Ministry responded with telephoned and written refusals to submit the document, arguing that doing so could have a negative impact on negotiations with the United States regarding the relocation effort and that the names of the areas targeted for asset revaluation must not become known.
However, the document Lee requested from the ministry, along with the names of 36 target sites, were recently displayed in their entirety on the E-Procurement System home page operated by the PPS, Lee said.
Charges have been made since the time of the Cheonan sinking last year that the military’s unprincipled secrecy has given rise to false statements. On Nov. 4, Democratic Party Lawmaker Ahn Gyu-back, a member of the National Assembly’s National Defense Committee, requested that the Ministry of National Defense “provide information about the content or document names of any agreement or memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the United Arab Emirates and South Korea regarding the dispatching of soldiers.”
The Defense Ministry refused to answer, claiming that “there were no concrete discussions.”
At a national defense committee meeting just a few days later, however, Defense Minister Kim Tae-young acknowledged the fact after Grand National Party Lawmaker Yoo Seong-min asked him whether one agreement and three MOUs had been signed with the UAE between April and October 2010.
Also cited as an example of dissembling from the armed forces was its response to an April 2010 request by the DP’s Special Committee on the Cheonan sinking for specific details about mine detection vessel activity. At the time, the Ministry of National Defense simultaneously submitted a response reading “We cannot answer that in writing because it is confidential” and another response containing details about the activity in question on the same questionnaire.
During a parliamentary audit last year, the ministry generated controversy by issuing an announcement to military-related organizations forbidding “the submission of documents without prior approval from the Ministry of National Defense.”
“It is an action in violation of the Constitution and the law to refuse, with blatant falsehoods, to submit even documents that are not confidential and have no bearing on national security,” Chairwoman Lee said.
　
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