hankyoreh

By Jung Hwan-bong and Park Tae-woo, staff reporters

The Seoul Central District Court found two men, identified by their surnames Lee and Kim, 74 and 56 respectively, innocent of spying for North Korea. The decision means police will likely face criticism for the unfounded accusations.

The jury said, “There is a lack of evidence to demonstrate that the accused received any orders from North Korea” in explaining its ruling.

However, Kim was sentenced to 10 months in prison with 2 years of probation for using forged passports. Kim and Lee were held for six months but should now be released following the innocent verdict.

The judge said, “Kim’s statement - the only evidence available - was critically lacking rationality, objectivity, and consistency. Hence, it was difficult to use it as evidence to prove Kim and Lee had collected information on GPS equipment for North Korea, as well as to show how the orders were ever received.

This case started off in last May when the media was dominated by the Unified Progressive Party (UPP)’s primary scandal, creating fierce controversy over followers of North Korea within South Korea. Then, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency announced Lee and Kim attempted to hand over military secrets to North Korea. This announcement by the police caused heavy criticism from the conservative media over the previous regime’s decision to allow unconverted political prisoners to start business with North Korea. They also categorized long-term political prisoners, such as Lee, as ‘potential spies’.

However, the Hankyoreh’s investigation showed that Lee had already written a letter of ideological conversion in 1988. Also, what was described as military secrets by the police turned out to be nothing more than pamphlets that can be easily found online. Moreover, the police failed to identify the North Korean agent who met Lee in China and allegedly ordered him to collect military secrets.

The police handed the case over to prosecutors and Lee and Kim were arrested on June 22 by the Seoul District Prosecutors’ Office. In fact, the charge of ‘preparing or plotting crimes on behalf of North Korea’ was a big step from the original charge of ‘spying for North Korea’ according to the police. Since what Lee and Kim have collected is such that anyone can access through the internet, it was considered to be a merely ’preliminary action‘. However, since there was a no single case before where it carried out the arrests based on the preparing or plotting crimes on behalf of North Korea conspiracy, it provoked controversies over whether the prosecution office’s power was abused.

Still, the prosecution’s unreasonable attempts to threaten public peace continued. In court on Oct. 30, they kept asking about the identity of the North Korean businessman whom Lee had traded with. They also made desperate attempts to link them with other irrelevant cases like ‘Wang Jae-san Case’ in order to brand him as pro-North Korea activist.

Kim Joo-won, Kim’s lawyer, said, “Today’s ruling shows there was a problem from the start of the investigation. The reason why jurisdiction was given to the prosecutors instead of the police was to prevent human right violations in the investigation process.”

However, as you can see from this case, the unreasonable and impractical indictment by the prosecution had led Lee and Kim to be held in custody for 6 months.

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