hankyoreh

staff photographer)

By Kim Mi-hyang, staff reporter

After being found not guilty of espionage by a district court, Yoo Woo-sung pressed charges against the investigators in his case on Jan. 7, accusing the prosecutors and the National Intelligence Service (NIS) of concealing and fabricating evidence in order to frame him as a spy. A North Korean refugee, Yoo formerly worked as a public servant for the city of Seoul.

At a press conference held on the same day at the Seoul offices of MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society Seoul, Yoo, 34, said, “I have asked the police to bring charges against an unidentified member of the prosecutors or the NIS for making false charges and fabricating evidence as defined by the National Security Law. The person who doctored the evidence must be found through an investigation.”

After being charged with handing information on North Korean refugees residing in the South, Yoo was cleared of the espionage charge in the district court. He was found guilty, however, on a separate charge of concealing his identity as an ethnic Chinese in North Korea to receive resettlement assistance from the South Korean government. He was sentenced to one year in prison, which was suspended for two years. The district court’s ruling is currently under appeal.

Yoo claims that his Chinese immigration records were fabricated and presented as evidence. The records were provided as evidence that Yoo made frequent trips in and out of North Korea and were recently submitted by prosecutors to the appellate court. Allegedly issued by the Chinese public security bureau in the city of Helong, the records state that Yoo entered North Korea on May 27th, 2006, and returned to China on June 10th of the same year. Yoo argues that he entered North Korea on May 23rd to attend his mother‘s funeral and returned to China on May 27th.

Yoo’s lawyers said, “With the assistance of a Chinese lawyer, we had the public security bureau in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture issue Yoo’s immigration records and compared them with the evidence submitted by the prosecutors. We confirmed that the ‘entrance’ field was altered to ‘departure’ in the prosecutors’ records and that these were stamped with the name of a non-existent Chinese government agency.”

“The public security bureau in Helong is not able to issue official immigration records, as that matter is entirely handled by the public security bureau of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. We even secured testimony from the public official in charge of the public security bureau in Helong confirming that it did not issue the document submitted by the prosecutors,” the legal team said.

During the district court trial, the prosecutors submitted photos that they claimed that Yoo had taken in North Korea on Jan. 21 and Jan. 23, 2012, but it was shown that all of these were actually taken in China. “I made the tough decision to leave the North in search of a democratic country, and I settled in South Korea and have been living here for 10 years,” Yoo said. “I only went to North Korea one time in 2006 to attend my mother’s funeral, but the investigators framed me as a spy. I hope that I don’t have to suffer this kind of injustice again.”

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