hankyoreh

Lee Dae-shik looks through his file at his home in Seoul‘s Sungbok district

The past four years must have been a nightmare for Lee Dae-shik, 78, but his face was composed. “South Korean society is still controlled by a phantom,” said the white-haired elderly man.

The second division of the Supreme Court (with Hon. Cho Hee-dae presiding) recently found Lee not guilty of violating the National Security Law.

Lee spent many years as an inmate. He was sent to prison in 1971 during an investigation into an attempt to revive the Unification Revolution Party, and he was released in 1990.

Lee was leading an ordinary life when he was put behind those cold steel bars once more on Apr. 18, 2012. This was a time when there was sharp debate in South Korea about the now defunct Unified Progressive Party’s alleged sympathy for North Korea; it was a time when North Korea was jamming GPS signals.

“I opened the front door in the morning to send the kids to middle school when suddenly police officers burst in and seized me by the arms. I was surprised since I hadn’t received any prior summons to visit the police, and the kids were shocked, too” Lee said.

Lee had looked composed, but even he had to shudder as he described how the police had dragged him away.

Officers in the security investigation department at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency pushed Lee to confess that he had intended to give military secrets and GPS-related equipment to North Korea.

May 30 of that year was when the police announced the so-called GPS spy case. The Hankyoreh and several other newspapers raised the possibility that the charges against Lee were fabricated. Despite the police claims, the information that Lee had compiled was not military secrets but just ordinary information that was available online. Lee was doing business with North Korea with the permission of South Korea’s Unification Ministry.

The police booked Lee on charges of espionage and put him in jail. On Dec. 6, 2012, Hon. Kim Sang-hwan, a judge in criminal division No. 28 at the Seoul Central District Court, found Lee not guilty, but during the six-month trial, Lee remained in police custody.

On May 20, 2014, Hon. Kim Sang-jun, a judge in criminal division No. 5 at the Seoul High Court, upheld the lower court’s ruling, and the Supreme Court confirmed Lee‘s innocence on Apr. 8.

In the GPS spy case, the courts found, police investigators and prosecutors had relied too much on the testimony of a certain individual.

“The evidence provided by Prosecutor Jeong Won-du is either mediated through the testimony of a New Zealand national of Korean descent surnamed Kim, 60, or can only be proven with the support of Kim’s testimony,” Hon. Kim Sang-hwan with the district court said.

The prosecutors had identified Kim Myeong-hwan, an employee with the Dandong mission of North Korea‘s National Coalition for Economic Cooperation, as the North Korean who had given Lee his espionage orders, but Hon. Kim Sang-jun with the high court described this as a “leap of logic.” Kim was the person that the Unification Ministry had given Lee permission to contact in regard to his business.

The court focused on the fact that Kim, who played a major role in the prosecutors’ investigation, was someone who had worked with Lee in North Korean trade until they had a falling out.

A citizen of New Zealand, Kim had gotten to know Lee in Dec. 2010 and had agreed to engage in an export business focusing on North Korea matsutake mushrooms, but the two parted ways over a disagreement about the advance payment on the contract.

Kim told the police that he had an email in which Lee had tried to submit a purchase order to the website of an American company called NSI in order to buy GPS-related equipment in Dandong on July 18, 2011 and provided the police with the related evidence.

But during the first trial, a third party testified that he had met Lee between July 18 and July 22, 2011, not in Dandong but in Yanji. The judge doubted the credibility of Kim’s testimony. During the trial, even the prosecutor who took part in the trial told the judge that he had hesitated before indicting Lee.

When Lee graduated from Korea University with a degree in administration in 1963, his prospects were bright, but in 1970 he was arrested on charges of espionage and ended up spending almost 20 years in prison.

Perhaps because of Lee’s implication in the Unification Revolution Party case, the North Korean trading company that he started in his 50s with the dream of starting over was suspected of being just a cover for carrying out instructions from North Korea, and Lee was put in prison once again. Even after the courts found Lee not guilty, the business projects that the Unification Ministry had already approved were canceled one after the other.

Lee was told that he would probably receive around 50 million won (US$43,800) in compensation, but he has already spent about that much on legal fees. In the first trial, Lee was represented by Hwang Kyo-an, an attorney with the Pacific Ocean law firm (and now Prime Minister) who has a background in security investigations.

Lee manages to scrape by with his elderly pension and public pension in a government-subsidized apartment. His house is sparsely furnished, with little beyond the bare essentials.

“My kids don’t come to see me. They still think that their dad’s a spy,” Lee said sadly.

“I’m not a communist. You could just think of me a nationalist,” Lee said, with apparent frustration.

What is this phantom presence that causes South Koreans to keep suspecting nationalists of being communists? No one has a definite answer for Lee’s continuing suffering.

By Heo Jae-hyun, staff reporter

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