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September 11, 2022
17:46 pm
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2 minutes
Seoul – AFP
South Korea is witnessing a sharp political controversy linked to two cases related to the killing of a South Korean employee who was shot and then burned by North Korean soldiers in their territorial waters in 2020, and the extradition of North Korean fishermen to Pyongyang despite their confession to killing 16 South sailors in 2019.
The killing of a South Korean employee, Lee Dae-joon, in September 2020, caused such a great shock that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un apologized.
And how did the South Korean employee find himself floating in a life jacket in the vicinity of the line between north and south? Details are few and part of them confidential.
Pyongyang admitted at the time that its soldiers fired dozens of bullets at the man.
In a statement released by the presidential office in Seoul at the end of September 2020, Kim Jong-un said he was “deeply sorry” for the “unexpected and shameful incident.”
The South Korean military said the 47-year-old fishing official was questioned for hours while in sea waters and confirmed that he wanted to escape before he was killed “by order of a higher authority”.
Was the official a defector fleeing gambling debts as the government of then South Korean President Moon Jae-in said, citing information kept secret 30 years later? Or is this version of the facts in fact a cover-up campaign at the highest level as asserted by the government of the new South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol, which filed a lawsuit over the handling of this issue by the previous administration?
Intelligence agencies maintain that its former chief, Park Ji-won, destroyed evidence that the employee, Lee, did not intend to move to Pyongyang. But Park denies this information and told AFP that it was “political revenge”.
The new conservative administration reopened an investigation into a second sensitive case involving two North Korean fishermen who confessed to killing 16 crew members at sea and were deported from South Korea to the North in 2019.
At the time, the government held that the brutal nature of their crimes deprived the two men of the protections normally afforded to North Korean deserters and prevented them from being considered refugees.
Political ploy? – Analysts believe that the political confrontations over these two issues involve the danger of a partisan interpretation of classified information and the law.
Opponents of President Yun, who is facing a record drop in his popularity just months following his election, say he is seeking by reopening the two cases to restore his popularity with disenchanted voters.
Supporters of Yoon, a former attorney general who narrowly won the election in March and promised to take a hard line once morest Pyongyang, say he is simply trying to resolve the issues.
It would be worse “if prosecutors chose to ignore the information and bury the cases for fear of being accused of “political investigations,” said Shin Yeol, a professor at Myeonggi University in Seoul.
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