[Interview] Defense Ministry acknowledges soldier’s death “in the line of duty” after 19 years

Posted on : 2017-09-02 15:31 KST Modified on : 2017-09-02 15:31 KST
Father’s struggle continues as he seeks to prove his son’s death was not a suicide
Kim Cheok explains a set of documents relating to his son’s case while visiting the Hankyoreh office in the Gongdeok neighborhood of Seoul on Aug. 31.  (by Kim Myoung-jin
Kim Cheok explains a set of documents relating to his son’s case while visiting the Hankyoreh office in the Gongdeok neighborhood of Seoul on Aug. 31. (by Kim Myoung-jin

South Korea’s Defense Ministry announced on Sept. 1 that it officially recognized that First Lieutenant Kim Hun had died in the line of duty, 19 years after his death. Kim Hun’s father Kim Cheok (74 years old, a 1965 graduate of the Korean Military Academy) had been notified the day before, on Aug. 31, but joy was not the only emotion on his face. He was glad the army had recognized that his son had died in the line of duty, but also said that the army needed to announce that his son had not committed suicide.

“Just because they’ve acknowledged that my son died in the line of duty doesn’t mean the cause of his death has been determined. The case needs to be reinvestigated. If the army doesn’t fix the way it investigates suspicious deaths, other people could suffer the fate of Kim Hun at any time,” his father said.

In Kim’s hand was a heavy briefcase full of documents – a briefcase he had been carrying around for nearly 20 years. The various documents in the briefcase shed light on what happened to his son. For Kim, time stopped on Feb. 24, 1998, when his son died.

When Kim Cheok visited the Hankyoreh office in Seoul’s Gongdeok neighborhood on Aug. 31, he remembered his son as having been strong and diligent. (Kim Hun, a 1996 graduate of the Military Academy, was 25 years old at the time of his death.) Hun was a model cadet whose friends gave him the nickname “Righteous Hand.” He was proud of his father, who had given his country 36 years of military service and even fought in the Vietnam War. Hun also chose the path of a career soldier.

But around noon on Feb. 24, 1998, Hun was found dead in an underground bunker in the Joint Security Area (JSA) in Panmunjeom with a bullet wound in his right temple. Numerous slipups occurred in the early phase of the investigation, with the death being declared a suicide two hours before the initial forensic examination of the scene. The army even said that Hun had committed suicide after reading “Norwegian Wood,” the novel by Haruki Murakami.

After Hun’s bereaved family filed a damages lawsuit against the government, the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the family should be compensated for the psychological harm resulting from the poorly conducted initial investigation. But the court declared itself unable to conclude whether Hun’s death was a suicide or a homicide. In Aug. 2012, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission recommended that the Defense Ministry recognize Hun as having died in the line of duty. The Commission argued that Hun’s death should not be presumed a suicide since there were signs of a scuffle in the bunker and because there was no imprint of a gun barrel on Hun’s temple. But the Defense Ministry did not classify Hun as having died in the line of duty for more than five years.

 staff photographer)
staff photographer)

Kim was furious that the Defense Ministry concluded that the cause of death was a suicide based on an arbitrary interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling and then announced that conclusion to the outside world. “For the past 19 years, a parliamentary audit at the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, the Fact-Finding Committee about Suspicious Deaths in the Military and the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission have all basically said that there were problems with the military’s claim that this was a suicide, but they refused to budge. They concealed the truth and cooked up a story,” he said.

Kim argues that South Korea has been reluctant to classify not only suicides and other deaths in the army but also suspicious military deaths as “dying in the line of duty.” “In every other country, people who die in the military are laid to rest in the national cemetery or a soldiers’ cemetery as long as they didn’t cause anyone harm. The only country that doesn’t do anything [for these soldiers] is South Korea,” he said.

Kim asserted that a strong army is created through public trust. “An unjust army is no better than a gang of robbers, and no one would trust that kind of army. Hun’s case isn’t about one individual – it’s about the soldiers whose deaths have yet to be explained, and it’s about all the young people who are serving or will serve in the military and their parents,” he said.

By Shin Ji-min, staff reporter

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

button that move to original korean article (클릭시 원문으로 이동하는 버튼)

Most viewed articles