hankyoreh

Suh Hoon, the former director of the National Security Office under Moon Jae-in, arrives at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul’s Seocho District on Dec. 2 for arraignment. (Kim Myoung-jin/The Hankyoreh)

Prosecutors investigating the previous administration’s response to the shooting of a South Korean government employee by North Korean soldiers in the West Sea arrested former Blue House Office of National Security Director Suh Hoon as the top decision-maker in the Moon Jae-in administration’s security lineup at the time.

Many are now watching to see if the prosecutors will call Moon himself in for questioning.

While prosecutors previously referred to Suh as the “final decision-maker” in connection with the case, the possibility of the investigation’s net widening in the wake of Suh’s arrest cannot be ruled out.

Early in the morning on Saturday, the first national security, elections, and labor investigations division of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ office under chief prosecutor Lee Hee-dong arrested Suh on charges that included abuse of authority to obstruct the exercise of rights.

Prior to Suh’s detention, warrant judge Kim Jeong-min of the Seoul Central District Court spent over 10 hours the day before on questioning for a substantive review of the warrant. In issuing the warrant for Suh’s arrest, Kim cited “concerns of evidence destruction in light of the severity of the crime, the suspect’s status, and his relationship with other parties.”

Suh, who had been waiting at the Seoul Detention Center in Uiwang, Gyeonggi Province, was immediately taken into confinement.

His arrest injects new momentum into the prosecutors’ investigation.

Many analysts had suggested the investigation was petering out after the successive releases of former Minister of National Defense Suh Wook and former Coast Guard Commissioner General Kim Hong-hee based on confinement legality reviews. The arrest of the figure with final responsibility for the administration’s response to the incident in the Blue House security lineup at the time could end up turning that situation around.

Having focused their questioning of Suh Hoon on the situation in terms of presidential reporting and orders at the time, the prosecutors now appear likely to begin an investigation of former National Intelligence Service (NIS) chief Park Jie-won too. During that process, they may review the question of whether Moon should also be investigated.

Since the final decisions at issue in the charges were made by the Blue House, both then-Chief of Staff Noh Young-min and Moon Jae-in himself are included in the investigation’s scope.

In their questioning of Suh Hoon on Nov. 24 and 25, prosecutors focused on how the situation was reported to Moon at the time of the September 2020 incident and what orders were received.

But ahead of their warrant request for Suh, prosecutors said Thursday that he was the “final decision-maker and figure holding ultimate responsibility” for the case. According to sources, they did not list Moon as an “accomplice” in their warrant request for Suh either.

Observers suggested that the issuance of Suh’s warrant means the situation has taken a new turn.

An attorney and former prosecutor with ample experience in national security-related cases said, “They might have listed Suh Hoon as the ‘figure holding ultimate responsibility’ in anticipation of the warrant being refused, but now that he’s been detained, it’s a different situation.”

“The groundwork for expanding the investigation’s scope was laid with their questioning of Suh, where they said ‘new facts have been brought to light,’” they explained.

Analysts also said a position statement by Moon has increased the need for the prosecutors to investigate. In a statement issued Thursday, Moon said, “At the time of the West Sea incident, the president received reports directly from the Ministry of National Defense, Coast Guard, and National Intelligence Service and granted final approval for those reports.”

For the prosecutors, this raises the need for at least written questioning to verify the connection with the incident.

But most observers still predicted the prosecutors are unlikely to include the former president in the scope of their investigation.

“Any investigation of a former president is going to be based on the political judgments of the prosecution leadership,” said a former senior prosecution official.

“They’re going to need to take into account factors like the nature of relations with North Korea and the political symbolism that the president holds,” they explained.

Even Prosecutor General Lee One-seok stressed during a parliamentary audit in October that the president “represents the nation and its public.”

“Any investigation of a former president must be considered with the utmost caution,” he advised at the time.

By Jeon Gwang-joon, staff reporter

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