South Korean authorities have announced the arrest of former Defense Minister Soo Wook and former Coast Guard Commissioner Kim Hong Hee in connection with the September 2020 death of a fishing official “at the hands of North Korean soldiers.”
The Seoul Central District Court has issued an arrest warrant for the two former officials, citing the risk of them running away or destroying evidence after Friday’s hearing.
The prosecutor also requested arrest warrants for Soo and Kim last Tuesday due to the imprisonment of Moon Jae-in’s former government without sufficient evidence that a fisheries official tried to flee north when he was killed, while the two face various charges, including including negligence in the performance of official duties, abuse of authority, forgery of official documents.
“Critics accuse the Moon Jae-in administration of coming to this conclusion in order to win Pyongyang’s favor,” the Yonhap news agency reported.
While the prosecution suspects that former Defense Minister Su deliberately deleted intelligence reports indicating that slain official Lee Dae-jung had no intention of defecting and ordered officials to write a false report to be submitted to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there are also suspicions that Kim, who in charge of the investigation, used fabricated facts at the time of his death to say that Li intended to flee to the North.
It is worth noting that a 47-year-old fishery official died from gunshot wounds from the Northern Coast Guard near the inter-Korean border in the West Sea, a day after he disappeared while working there on an inspection ship, the Moon government said. concluded at the time that the official had been killed. Shot while trying to escape north, but the Coast Guard and Army retracted that conclusion last June, saying there was no evidence that the murdered official had such motives.
Source: “Yonhap”