Prosecutors busy researching fishermen repatriation case

Former National Intelligence Service Director Suh Hoon

Prosecutors are building a case against former government officials involved in the forced repatriation of two North Korean fishermen, sources told the JoongAng Ilbo on Wednesday.

The case is expected to pick up speed now that two key figures in the case returned to Korea in the past week.

Former Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul and former National Intelligence Service (NIS) Director Suh Hoon, who returned to the country from the United States on July 26 and 30, are in prosecutors’ crosshairs for their roles in the deportation of two North Korean fishermen after they crossed into South Korean waters in the East Sea in November 2019.

Accused of killing the captain and 15 fellow crew members aboard their fishing vessel, they were sent back to the North five days after their capture by the South Korean Navy and a brief inter-agency investigation.

In early July, the NIS filed a complaint against Suh, alleging that he violated the National Intelligence Service Act by prematurely terminating the investigation into the two fishermen and fabricating documents in relation to the case.

The Unification Ministry, which Kim headed from April 2019 to June 2020, handled the repatriation of the two fishermen and obtained permission from the United Nations Command (UNC) to use the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom to return them.

Current Unification Minister Kwon Young-se said last month in a radio interview that the UNC was unaware that the civilians returning to the North via Panmunjom were being repatriated against their will, and that the UNC lodged a strong complaint with the ministry after the incident.

The repatriation of the fishermen has re-emerged as a major political controversy since President Yoon Suk-yeol took office.

Democratic Party officials have defended the Moon administration’s deportation decision by citing Article 9 of the North Korean Defectors’ Act, which stipulates that escapees “who commit murder and other non-political crimes may be excluded from protection.”

Chung Eui-yong, former chief of the National Security Office (NSO) under Moon, described the fishermen as “vicious criminals” in a statement last month and argued their 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, arguing that “no South Korean court has ever exercised jurisdiction over violent criminal acts committed by a North Korean against another North Korean.”

But prosecutors appear to be ready to challenge that argument.

According to a state prosecution service official who spoke to the JoongAng Ilbo on Wednesday, prosecutors are looking into a 2016 case where a North Korean manager who worked at a Pyongyang-operated restaurant in Yanji, northeastern China, was found by the Seoul Central District Court to be guilty of causing bodily injury to one of the employees before they both defected to the South.

Although the manager argued that any crimes he committed outside of South Korea before his defection should not be subject to the court’s jurisdiction, the court ruled that crimes by North Koreans abroad are justiciable by South Korean courts since the South Korean constitution claims all of the Korean Peninsula as its territory — and its people as its citizens by extension.

“South Korean courts have jurisdiction over crimes committed by the defendant, who is a North Korean defector, even in foreign countries such as China,” the judgement read.

According to the official, prosecutors plan to use that case to support their argument that the fishermen should have been admitted as defectors regardless of the criminal accusations against them.

The case could also support the indictment of Suh and Kim on charges of violating the fishermen’s right to due process under the Constitution as South Korean citizens.

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