Both cases refer to detente policies with North Korea. The prosecutor has requested arrest warrants against the former Minister of Defense and the former Commissioner General of the Coast Guard. According to the Democratic Party, the “brain” of the offensive is the current head of state Yoon Suk-yeol.
Milan () – For some time now, the South Korean justice system has been investigating two cases involving former Democratic president Moon Jae-in and more specifically his detente policies with Pyongyang. The first case is related to the repatriation, in 2019, of some North Korean deserters who arrived in the South – with the declared intention of staying – and the Government would have sent them back to the North after having killed other deserters on the way to Seoul.
The second concerns the death in the open sea of a South Korean coastguard at the hands of the Pyongyang authorities in 2020. The Seoul government allegedly tried to cover up the crime by accusing the official (without sufficient evidence, according to the judges) of be in the process of defecting to the North when he was assassinated.
The former president is not yet being investigated, but it seems more and more likely that justice will decide to do so. For now, the prosecution is trying to obtain arrest warrants against the former defense minister and the former commissioner general of the Coast Guard, which could happen this afternoon. Both have been accused of falsifying official documents related to the 2020 assassination in order to prevent North Korea from becoming a target of further criticism.
But they are not the only ones who could end up in the crosshairs of investigators. Last week the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) recommended opening an investigation into 20 Moon administration officials, including the former defense minister, the former intelligence chief and the former national security adviser.
This month the BAI also asked Moon to answer some questions about the case in writing, a request that the former president had refused to comply with as “disrespectful.” Conservatives currently in government believe the document forgery would not have been possible without Moon’s direct intervention.
In parallel, the case of the repatriation that was carried out against the intentions of the defectors in 2019 is also being investigated. On October 19, President Moon’s chief of staff was summoned to a hearing in order to determine to what extent was involved in the decision to proceed with the repatriation and whether he had acted in compliance with superior orders. Some photographic evidence released this summer shows that none of the defectors wanted to return to the North.
Faced with this judicial offensive, the Democratic Party, currently in opposition, has hastened to entrench itself. The main referent of the Democrats affirms that the brain of the attacks against the previous administration would be the current president Yoon Suk-yeol, who during the electoral campaign, in March of this year, had promised to investigate Moon: “It is obvious that the office presidential is the brain,” he said.
