Former security chief denies fishermen repatriations were done to appease North

North Korea

Published: 17 Jul. 2022, 17:28

Former security chief denies fishermen repatriations were done to appease North

Members of the North Korean Women Defectors' Alliance held a protest outside the Democratic Party's headquarters in Yeouido, southern Seoul, on Sunday, urging punishment of officials involved in the 2019 repatriation incident. [NEWS1]

A former Blue House security official denied Sunday that Seoul repatriated two North Korean fishermen in 2019 at Pyongyang's behest, hitting back at claims that their deportation was done to appease North Korea.

“There was no request from North Korea to repatriate these vicious criminals first,” said Chung Eui-yong, former chief of the National Security Office (NSO), in a public statement released through Democratic Party (DP) lawmaker Yoon Kun-young that echoed the DP’s earlier descriptions of the fishermen as dangerous felons.

Doubling down on the DP’s claim that the repatriated fishermen were “once-in-a-generation murderers,” Chung emphasized that it was Seoul that first asked Pyongyang if it would accept the pair before deporting them.

“We sounded out North Korea’s opinion because we need to check the willingness of the counterpart nation first in the case of deportation,” Chung said.

The two North Korean fishermen crossed the inter-Korean maritime border in the East Sea and were taken into custody by the South Korean Navy on Nov. 2, 2019.

Accused of killing the captain and 15 fellow crew members aboard their fishing vessel, the pair was repatriated via the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom five days later.

Photos of the fishermen’s forced repatriation released last week by the Unification Ministry sparked rage from human rights groups and calls for the prosecution of high-ranking officials in the former President Moon Jae-in administration, including Chung.

The former NSO chief struck back at arguments from defectors’ associations and the conservative People Power Party (PPP) saying that the Moon administration unjustly expelled the two fishermen to appease Pyongyang, arguing the pair were not bona fide defectors deserving of South Korean protection.

“They did not immediately come to the South after committing their crime, nor did they intend to defect to the South in the first place,” Chung said, repeating the Moon administration’s claim that the pair did not express a desire to defect.

“The [killers] returned to the port of Kimchaek after [committing the murders], but one of their accomplices was arrested by the North Korean authorities in the process of raising funds for the group’s escape, so the other two fled by sea and were captured by our naval special forces,” Chung said.

The former NSO chief argued the fishermen’s deportation was the best measure to ensure the safety of South Korean society, even if it lacked due process.

“It would have been practically impossible to punish them based only on their confessions,” Chung claimed, explaining that “no South Korean court has ever exercised jurisdiction over violent criminal acts committed by a North Korean against another North Korean.”

“If [the fishermen] had been allowed to enter South Korean society without punishment, who would be responsible for protecting our citizens?” Chung asked.

Chung also argued that the current controversy threatened to undermine confidence in the country’s governance.

“Immediately after [the fishermen’s] deportation, the government submitted an undisclosed report to the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, and even some [PPP] members agreed that [expulsion] was an appropriate measure,” Chung said.

“However badly some people want to delegitimize a previous administration, revisiting a legitimate course of action taken with inter-agency consensus in accordance with the law is tantamount to attacking our system of governance,” he added.

The presidential office on Sunday issued a rebuttal to Chung's arguments, calling on DP members and former government officials to “diligently cooperate” with the investigation into the Moon administration's handling of the repatriation case.

“There is a serious problem with labeling the North Korean fishermen as ‘once-in-a-generation murderers’ without a proper investigation,” presidential spokesman Choi Young-bum said at a press briefing.

Choi also took issue with Chung's claim that the fishermen did not intend to defect. “The idea that they didn't want to defect is a gross distortion,” the spokesman said. “If that were the case, why did [the previous government] ignore their handwritten declaration, where they stated their intent to defect?”

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]