Uproar as ex-spy chief, accused of negligence in North Korea killing, is named to run as lawmaker

Park Jie-won, the former director of the National Intelligence Service, has been nominated by the Democratic Party of Korea to run in the general election as a lawmaker candidate. (Yonhap)

The Democratic Party of Korea’s decision to nominate the former National Intelligence Service chief Park Jie-won to run in the upcoming general election has provoked uproar from the bereaved family of the South Korean fisheries official, Lee Dae-jun, who was killed by North Korean soldiers in September 2020.

As the chief of the NIS at the time, Park is a key defendant in the ongoing trial over South Korean authorities’ alleged negligence during the time between Lee’s capture by North Korean soldiers and his shooting death at sea, as well as the subsequent cover-up efforts. Park is accused of forcing agents to delete records and documents on Lee’s case from the spy service’s internal servers and colluding with Cheong Wa Dae’s National Security Council.

According to the Democratic Party, Park won the nomination to run as a candidate in a South Jeolla Province district that is one of the liberal party’s main strongholds. Polls to date suggest a comfortable win for Park, who if elected would enjoy constitutional immunity from some criminal justice procedures as a sitting lawmaker for the next four years of his term.

The brother of the late fisheries official, Lee Rae-jin, said the “main suspect in what can only be understood as the country’s crime against a public official and citizen” getting a chance to enter the National Assembly was “unacceptable.”

Speaking to The Korea Herald on Friday, he said that the Democratic Party, by deciding to hand Park the nomination, was “practically giving him a pass from taking responsibility over what happened.”

“Park, as the director of the National Intelligence Service, was in the very room with other top Moon Jae-in officials where they made the call to wrongfully blame my brother by falsely accusing him of trying to defect to North Korea, instead of taking accountability for their failures to save him over some 30 hours when he was still alive in the hands of North Korea,” he said.

According to the prosecution service and the inspection board, over a series of meetings following Lee’s death, Park and other top national security and presidential officials agreed to tell the press that the late official was an attempted defector to Pyongyang. In the immediate aftermath, they also portrayed him as still missing despite being aware that he was already killed.

The Democratic Party retracted its rules about not allowing candidates involved in criminal indictments and trials to run in elections in an intraparty vote held in May last year.

Lee also said that he “couldn’t forget the day he watched with horror” as the Moon administration released the letter from Kim Jong-un on the killing “as if it was something to be grateful about.”

Besides Park, other key Moon officials on trial in the North Korea killing case are Suh Hoon, the then-chief of the National Security Council; Seo Wook, the then-minister of National Defense; and Kim Hong-hee, the then-commissioner of the Coast Guard.

Park served as the director of the National Intelligence Service from July 2020 to May 2022 under the Moon administration.

By Kim Arin(arin@heraldcorp.com)