hankyoreh

staff photographer)

By Heo Jae-hyun, staff reporter

The attorney for North Korean defector and alleged spy Yoo Woo-sung is accusing prosecutors of altering photographs of Chinese border records with Photoshop to manufacture court “evidence” of his frequent trips to China and North Korea for espionage. Yoo was found innocent in August, but a hearing on a prosecutors appeal is ongoing.

The prosecutors submitted as evidence border records notarized with a stamp at the bottom to certify that they were official documents.

But the ongoing trial has raised fundamental questions, including why authentication would have been necessary for a document issued by Chinese authorities - and why the method does not accord with the procedures in Chinese notary law.

Prosecutors have yet to give a clear account of how they obtained the records in question. According to a treaty on assistance in criminal matters signed by the two governments in 1998, the South Korean Foreign Minister must send a cooperation request to China whenever investigators are working in the country to collect evidence in a criminal case.

But an official at the Chinese consulate in Seoul said South Korean authorities “never received our cooperation. It’s not believable that Mr. Yoo’s border records could have possibly been submitted to a South Korean trial court”.

If the evidence does turn out to have been fabricated, prosecutors could face criminal charges.

“If the prosecutors doctored evidence to paint an innocent person as a spy, then there needs to be action to hold them criminally responsible for abusing their authority, and they need to be investigated,” said Hwang Pil-gyu, an attorney and human rights committee member for the Korean Bar Association.

In another irregularity, prosecutors reversed their own allegations against Yoo when submitting his border crossing records. Previously, they had maintained that Yoo entered North Korea secretly by crossing the Tumen (Duman) River, which divides North Korea and China.

But the records they actually submitted showed him having entered through a border crossing station.

Kim Yong-min, Yoo’s attorney, said that while he was confident the records themselves were forged, the prosecutors “made it clear just what a sham their investigation of Mr. Yoo has been by presenting evidence that conflicts with their own bill of indictment.”

Before the court proceedings on Dec. 6, Yoo spoke to the Hankyoreh in an interview.

“It’s terrible that they would go so far as to forge evidence to portray an innocent person as a spy,” he said. “I just want to be an ordinary citizen of the Republic of Korea.”

After years of struggle, Yoo was hired as a special defector employee in a contractual government position working in Seoul Metropolitan Government’s social services policy department in June 2011. The city announced the termination of Yoo’s contract last March after the espionage charges were made.

Yoo is still undergoing psychotherapy for the shock of the National Intelligence Service investigation and his experiences in prison. No one has yet been held responsible for the suffering he experienced.

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