hankyoreh

By Kim Su-heon and Song Chae Kyung-hwa, staff reporters

Evidence suggests the release of transcripts from a 2007 inter-Korean summit by Saenuri Party members of the National Assembly Intelligence Committee was carefully planned by the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

On June 20, the NIS brought excerpts and original copies of the records to the National Assembly - without any agreement from the opposition - and showed them only to Saenuri members of the committee. At the time, they said the records had been requested by Suh Sang-ki, a Saenuri member of the committee. The content was then leaked to the press by members who saw the records. When a controversy ensued, a key NIS figure declared on June 21 that the records would be declassified, then reclassified as “general documents” so that the general public could read their content. This plan was carried out on June 24.

This means that after inviting accusations of political interference by showing the records to Saenuri lawmakers and contributing to calls for their full disclosure, the NIS and its director, Nam Jae-joon, then used this as leverage to achieve their final goal of making the records public.

It also distorted the opposition’s arguments as part of its campaign. In a press release, it declared, “Despite the National Assembly Intelligence Committee having read the records, there have continued to be accusations about the doctoring or distortion of [former President Roh Moo-hyun’s] statements about the Northern Limit Line, and politicians on both sides have been making strong calls for the release of the entire text.”

But the Democratic Party never demanded that the NIS release its records of the conversations. Instead, it proposed voting on sharing a certified copy from Roh’s records at the National Archives of Korea, with the results to be released with votes from two-thirds of National Assembly members as per the law. This idea was mentioned in response to the possibility of the NIS tampering with the records, and premised on a parliamentary audit into the organization’s interference in last year’s presidential election.

In response, Nam distorted the facts to achieve this NIS’s own goal of disclosing the full records.

Its rationale for the ruling of the text as part of the public record, which provided a legal justification for disclosing it, was also reportedly based on an arbitrary judgment by prosecutors. A key source with the prosecutors noted that there was “no testimony that President Roh ordered the conversations to be classified as public record.”

Meanwhile, the Saenuri leadership and members of the Intelligence Committee were in a state of confusion over what to do with the records the NIS had given them.

The NIS notified Intelligence Committee members from all parties that it would be delivering the documents at around 3:30pm. Shortly thereafter, NIS employees visited the offices of individual lawmakers in the ruling and opposition parties to deliver plastic-bound original copies and excerpts. Opposition lawmakers refused to take the copies, while all Saenuri members of the Intelligence Committee accepted them. Hearing news of this, reporters began visiting the offices of the Saenuri lawmakers at around 4pm to make copies of the eight-page excerpted records, which were used as a basis for reports. While reporters waited for the time-consuming copying of the 103-page original, Saenuri floor leader Choi Kyung-hwan called an “emergency meeting” of the party’s Intelligence Committee members.

During the meeting, participants expressed their objections to the Saenuri unilaterally leaking the content of the NIS documents to the press. The lawmakers’ offices rushed to halt the copying of the original and collect the excerpts.

But the excerpts had already been widely circulated and used for reports.

By around 5pm, the Saenuri floor leadership reached an official decision to hold off on disclosing the records to the press. After the meeting, floor spokesman Kim Tae-heum met with reporters at the National Assembly press center and said the documents “have been delivered to Democratic Party lawmakers too, so we plan to wait until we have the chance to look [at the documents] with the opposition.”

At around 6pm, Saenuri Party leader Hwang Woo-yea called an emergency Supreme Council meeting to discuss disclosing the NIS records, but no decision was made on whether to release the original. Meeting with reporters after the briefing, party spokesman Yoo Il-ho told reporters, “If we’re legally allowed to disclose [the records], I don’t see any reason why we can’t.”

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