Murder in Yellow Sea remains a political football

The widow of Lee Dae-jun, a fisheries official fatally shot by North Korea in 2020, cries during a press conference in Seoul on Friday. [NEWS1]

The real story behind the 2020 murder of a South Korean fisheries official by North Korea is slowly coming out, but the case remains a political football.

The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries official named Lee Dae-jun was shot dead and burned by North Korean soldiers in the Yellow Sea on Sept. 22, 2020. At the time, the Moon Jae-in administration said the 47-year-old official, who worked for the West Sea Fisheries Management Service, had been attempting to defect to North Korea based on intelligence. It said he was trying to run away from a gambling debt.

Lee's relatives and the opposition People Power Party (PPP) questioned those conclusions. President Yoon Suk-yeol, when running for the presidency, vowed to reopen the case.

Last Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense and Coast Guard made an apology in a joint press briefing, saying it found no evidence to confirm any intention by Lee to defect to the North.

Aside from the Coast Guard investigation results, however, the government didn't disclose any documents that could explain the circumstances of the incident, saying it has to protect military intelligence assets. In addition, the Moon administration made the related documents presidential.

Under current law, confidential documents of the National Security Office are sealed for 15 years. For them to be made public, a motion in the National Assembly must be passed by a two-thirds vote at the Assembly. One other way would be by an order from the chief judge of the Seoul High Court.

People Power Party (PPP) floor leader Kwon Seong-dong continued to blast the Democratic Party over the issue in a Facebook post over the weekend. He said that Lee didn’t try to defect to the North, and that the DP, which claims to stand for justice and human rights, has abandoned them in order to avoid embarrassing North Korea.

During a visit to Tongdosa Temple in Busan on Saturday, PPP Chairman Lee Jun-seok also slammed the liberal DP, saying it is “preventing the truth from coming out." Lee said it was more interested in fact-finding on issues that embarrassed conservatives, like the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement and the Sewol ferry disaster, which occurred under a conservative president.

The PPP has set up a task force to investigate the death of the fisheries official.

The DP responded by saying the PPP is taking a McCarthyistic approach to tarnishing the reputation of the DP, saying it has surrendered to North Korea.

Rep. Woo Sang-ho, the interim leader of the DP, said during a press conference at the National Assembly on Sunday that the PPP seems to be more interested in confrontation than cooperation.

Regarding the demand to disclose presidential records, Woo said he “couldn’t hold in his laughter,” adding, “If we disclose information, North Korea will learn how a South Korean intelligence agency obtained the North's military information — revealing the entire intelligence system of the country.”

BY SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun1@joongang.co.kr]