YTN airs clip from ex-vice minister orgy video

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YTN airs clip from ex-vice minister orgy video

After a media outlet released part of what it said was video footage police used in 2013 to conclude that Kim Hak-eui, deputy justice minister in the previous Park Geun-hye administration, attended a sex party, Kim’s lawyer promised a libel suit.

“We obtained exclusively the footage that police had and we could tell clearly that the face of the man shown in the footage was Kim’s,” YTN, a local news outlet, reported Thursday night. “Because the public has the right to know and in order to expose the [acts of the] prosecution that investigated the case at the time, we hereby share a part of the footage.”

The footage shows a man singing into a mic while caressing a woman with his other arm. The woman’s back is turned to the camera.

“As the camera closes in on the man’s face, you can see the facial contours clearly, to the point that you can tell the man is wearing a pair of rimless glasses,” YTN reported. “We asked the [independent] Forensic Image Analysis Lab to analyze the footage and it concluded that the man is Kim.”

The footage, YTN said, was the same that police obtained in May 2013.

Police obtained three video files in their investigation of Kim and said that Kim was clearly seen having sex with a woman at a sex party at a villa in Wonju, Gangwon, belonging to a contractor, Yoon Jung-cheon.

YTN did not specify in its report whether it had all three files.

“We could tell with just the naked eye that the [person in the] footage was former Vice Justice Minister Kim,” Commissioner General Min Gab-ryong of the National Police Agency said in a parliamentary hearing about the case on March 14, adding that the prosecution rejected this determination.

Police handed the case to prosecutors after its four-month probe in 2013, stating that it found that Yoon had hosted a number of such events with high-profile figures in attendance in order to gain favors, based on testimony from some of the women hired to have sex with the guests.

But the prosecution ended its investigation in November 2013 and filed no charges against Kim and Yoon, saying the woman in the videos could not be identified.

Kim’s lawyer said on Friday Kim will press charges against YTN for making false accusations.

“Even the National Forensic Service did not make the conclusion [in 2013] that the man in the footage is Kim,” Kim’s lawyer said in a statement. “It is deeply regretful that YTN concluded so… when it cannot even prove that it has the original copy of the file. [Kim] will take legal action immediately for the grave libel by YTN.”

Kim served as the No. 2 official in the Justice Ministry for six days during the Park administration in March 2013 before resigning over the orgy allegation.

Though the prosecution closed the case without pressing charges in 2013, a special commission under the Ministry of Justice reopened it last month. The commission was launched after the Moon Jae-in administration came to power in 2017.

Kim is suspected of aggravated rape and giving favors for sex. The five-year statute of limitations for the sex-for-favors allegations has expired, but the 15-year statute of limitations on aggravated rape charges won’t expire until 2024.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]
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