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Park Jie-won, the former head of the National Intelligence Service, speaks at a press conference by former top officials facing investigation over their response to the death of a South Korean official in the Yellow Sea in 2020, organized by an action committee formed by Democratic Party lawmakers. To Park’s left are Suh Hoon, the former director of the Blue House National Security Office, and Noh Young-min, the former presidential chief of staff. (pool photo)

Senior officials from the Moon Jae-in administration who are currently being investigated by South Korean prosecutors in conjunction with North Korea’s killing of a South Korean public servant in the Yellow Sea in 2020 held their first joint press conference on Thursday in which they directly rebutted the related allegations.

The officials at the press conference included Park Jie-won, former director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS); Suh Hoon, former director of the National Security Office; and Noh Young-min, former Blue House chief of staff.

The former officials used the press conference to vocally reject the Board of Audit and Inspection’s (BAI) conclusion on Oct. 13 that the National Security Office had created a dishonest narrative about Lee Dae-jun, the deceased official, voluntarily defecting to North Korea.

“We had no reason to frame Lee’s actions as defection without evidence, nor was there anything to gain from doing so,” the former officials said.

The former officials robustly denied the charges through a position statement and press conference organized at the National Assembly by an action committee set up by the opposition Democratic Party to respond to what they characterize as “political oppression by the Yoon administration.”

According to the former officials, the BAI misrepresented the meeting of related ministers at 1 am on Sept. 23, 2020, which is at the heart of the controversy, as well as subsequent developments.

The BAI said that the intelligence report containing evidence about the North Korean military shooting the public servant was deleted after the meeting from the Defense Ministry’s Military Intelligence Management System, or MIMS, along with 60 other items of signals intelligence. Furthermore, the BAI said, 46 intelligence reports were also deleted without authorization at the NIS.

The BAI concluded that a concerted cover-up of evidence that would contradict the defection narrative occurred after the early morning meeting attended by Suh Hoon, Noh Young-min, Park Jie-won and former Defense Minister Suh Wook.

But Suh Hoon and the other former officials retorted that those intelligence reports had not been deleted, but merely redistributed. The original copies of those reports remain with the units that produced them, Suh explained, following measures to prevent the unnecessary dissemination of sensitive information.

“Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup responded during the parliamentary audit in the National Assembly’s National Defense Committee on Oct. 25 that the original copies of the intelligence reports related to this incident still exist and can be viewed even now. Framing redistribution as deletion is the fake news here,” the former officials said in their position statement.

Suh Hoon also denied a report that Suh Wook, who is currently in custody, had testified to prosecutors that the intelligence had been deleted on his command. “Considering that no such instructions or deliberations occurred, I don’t think he would have any reason to have given such testimony.”

By way of rebutting the BAI’s conclusion that the Moon administration didn’t have adequate grounds for advancing the defection narrative, the former officials listed pieces of evidence acquired at the time in their statement. To wit, a “special intelligence” report claimed that Lee had expressed his intention to defect, a pair of sandals had been found neatly arranged on the deck, and Lee himself was wearing a life preserver and clinging to a flotation device when he was discovered.

“Given the intelligence reports, we would have been massaging the narrative if we had concealed or disregarded the fact that Lee had expressed his intention to defect,” they emphasized.

The former officials also said they hadn’t been briefed about the circumstances that the BAI claimed the government had concealed in order to prop up the defection narrative.

The BAI believes that the government was aware of but ignored the following facts: that Lee’s life preserver had simplified Chinese characters on it (which are used in China, but not South Korea), that Lee had been wrapped in bandages, and that there was a Chinese fishing vessel in the vicinity.

However, Suh Hoon said that the BAI’s announcement was the first time he’d heard any of that. “Since all of the related documents are in the possession of the current administration, it ought to disclose the details,” he said.

Suh Hoon also addressed the repatriation of two North Korean fishermen in 2019, another case that’s being investigated by the prosecutors.

“They were horrific criminals who mercilessly slaughtered 16 of their colleagues in a single night and were navigating aimlessly when they were apprehended. In the interest of public safety in South Korea, those people could not be set loose in this society. Any government or national security organization in the world would have made the same decision,” the former national security advisor said.

By Lim Jae-woo, staff reporter

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