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Yoo Woo-sung after being acquitted by the Supreme Court in Oct. 2015 of violating the National Security Act. (by Kim Tae-hyeong

An appeals court ruled to throw out an indictment against the victim in a recent high-profile case involving espionage evidence being doctored by the National Intelligence Service (NIS), citing an “abuse of prosecutorial power.”

Yoo Woo-sung, 36, had been indicted on charges of violating the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act for alleged involvement in illegal remittances to North Korea. With its ruling, the court effectively acknowledged the case had been a “retaliatory indictment” by prosecutors, with “some intentions” behind their decision to pursue an indictment in a case that they had decided not to prosecute four years earlier.

Judge Yun Jun of Seoul High Court’s 5th criminal appeals division ruled on Sept. 1 to dismiss the charges of Foreign Exchange Transactions Act violations against Yoo, while fining him 7 million won (US$6,270) for obstruction of official duties through deception by obscuring his status as an ethnically Chinese North Korean and receiving settlement support by posing as a purely North Korean defector. In the first trial, the district court had convicted Yoo on both counts and sentenced him to 10 million won (US$8,950) in fines.

“After deciding to suspend prosecution of Yoo in 2010, the prosecutors reversed their decision and moved again to indict him in 2014, but the situation had not changed significantly in the meantime,” the court noted, adding that the new indictment “must be dismissed according to the rules for prosecution of cases,” which state that cases are to be dismissed when a previous decision was made not to indict.

“There appears to have been some intention [behind the indictment],” the court concluded.

In Feb. 2014, Yoo and attorneys representing him with MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society discovered the evidence in his espionage case had been fabricated by NIS employees. Soon afterwards in May, the second criminal division of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, under chief prosecutor Lee Du-bong, dredged up the remittance charges, which prosecutors had decided not to pursue four years earlier, and indicted Yoo on them.

Yoo was previously investigated by prosecutors after evidence surfaced that he had used a bank passbook under a different name to remit funds from defectors in South Korea between 2005 and 2009 at the request of family members living in China.

The Seoul Dongbu District Prosecutors’ Office, which had begun investigating the case in Sept. 2009, moved the following March to suspend Yoo’s indictment on the grounds that it was his first offense and his “extent of involvement in borrowing a deposit account was minor.” With no means available for defectors to send money to family members in North Korea to cover living expenses, the use of Chinese middlemen was an open secret in the community.

Noting that prosecutors had “merely submitted two speculative reports from the Chosun Ilbo newspaper and other sources and a complaint by one defector” in its indictment, the court said, “This cannot be viewed as an instance in which important evidence was discovered.” The court also rejected prosecutors’ explanation that they had decided to indict Yoo because of “additional circumstantial evidence surfacing of his direct involvement in remittances to North Korea.”

Speaking at a press conference after the trial, Yoo’s attorneys said prosecutors had “attempted a retaliatory indictment against Yoo after the problems he caused them by revealing the manufacturing of evidence.”

“Now that the judiciary has called this an ‘abuse of prosecutorial power’ with ‘some apparent intention’ behind it, we need to find out who made the decision to attempt a retaliatory indictment and who prepared it so we can hold the prosecutors accountable,” the attorneys added.

Of his experience, Yoo said, “My life has been bruised and battered over the past four years with harassment by the NIS and prosecutors. I don’t want to be tormented anymore.”

Yoo fled North Korea in 2004 and was working as a public official for the city of Seoul when he was indicted on charges of espionage, a violation of the National Security Act. His acquittal was upheld by the Supreme Court in Oct. 2015 after the discovery that evidence against him had been forged by NIS staff.

By Heo Jae-hyun and Kim (Jeong) Ji-hoon, staff reporters

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