Murder in Yellow Sea is reopened by Yoon Suk-yeol gov't

Politics

Published: 16 Jun. 2022, 18:20 Updated: 16 Jun. 2022, 18:47

Murder in Yellow Sea is reopened by Yoon Suk-yeol gov't

Park Sang-chun, chief of the Incheon Coast Guard, left, and Yoon Hyeong-jin, a senior official from the South Korean Defense Ministry, apologize for saying a South Korean fisheries official killed by North Korea's military in 2020 had been trying to defect in a press conference in Incheon on Thursday. [YONHAP]

The Ministry of National Defense and Coast Guard apologized Thursday for saying that a South Korean fisheries official killed by North Korea's military in 2020 near the western sea border had been trying to defect.

The apology is a reversal from one year and nine months ago, when South Korean military authorities under the Moon Jae-in government said the official had been trying to get to North Korea, but left open many details of his gruesome and mysterious death.

The Yoon Suk-yeol government earlier Thursday disclosed new information related to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries official who was shot dead and burned by North Korean soldiers in the Yellow Sea on Sept. 22, 2020. The official had gone missing the previous day while on duty near Yeonpyeong Island in waters south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea.

At the time, the South Korean government denounced the killing of Lee, who worked for the Oceans Ministry's West Sea Fisheries Management Service. In turn, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made a rare apology for the fatal shooting in a message on Sept. 25.

The Moon government said the 47-year-old fisheries official, surnamed Lee, had been "voluntarily" attempting to defect to North Korea and that the North Koreans seemed to have killed and burned him out of fear of coronavirus infection.

South Korean military authorities said it reached those conclusions based on intelligence such as wiretapping and circumstantial evidence. Lee was said to have been in a state of panic over a gambling debt.

But Lee's relatives and the People Power Party (PPP) questioned those conclusions and called for the release of confidential information on the death, which the Moon administration had refused to disclose.

Last November, the Seoul Administrative Court ordered the Blue House National Security Office (NSO) and the Coast Guard to disclose classified information on the killing to Lee's family, but the agencies appealed the ruling. The case is pending in the Seoul High Court.

On Thursday, the Yoon administration's NSO withdrew the appeal. However, the NSO said in a statement that the relevant classified documents already have been transferred to presidential records, and it will be difficult at the current time to disclose information managed by the NSO about the previous administration.

In a joint press briefing Thursday, the Coast Guard and Defense Ministry said it found no evidence to confirm any intention by Lee to defect to the North.

Park Sang-chun, head of the Incheon Coast Guard, which was in charge of the case, said, "We investigated whether the shot public official had defected to North Korea but could not trace how he reached North Korean waters or find any intention of defecting to the North."

The Defense Ministry said in a statement, "We have confused the public by announcing that the killed public official may have attempted to defect to North Korea and regret that we were not able to reveal more facts because of security reasons."

However, aside from the Coast Guard investigation results, the government didn't disclose further classified military and presidential documents that could explain the circumstances of the incident, saying it has to protect the military's intelligence assets.

Kim Tae-hyo, first deputy director of the NSO, also held a phone call Thursday morning with Lee's elder brother, who has been vocal about the truth being obscured, to explain the governmental review on his brother's shooting.

As a presidential candidate, Yoon pledged that he would take all possible legal measures to restore Lee's tarnished honor.

Lee's family said in a statement that they will "continue to take legal action to access presidential records."

The case could also lead to a heated debate in political circles over whether it is okay to disclose confidential presidential documents from the previous government, which are sealed for 15 years.

BY SARAH KIM [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr]