hankyoreh

Dec. 14.

The South Korean public got another ugly shock in the Blue House document leak case on Dec. 13 when a lieutenant from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s first information office committed suicide while under investigation for the leak. The lieutenant, identified by his surname Choi, was a household head with a 15-year career with the police. It is both heartbreaking and chilling to think what might have led him to such a drastic decision right after being questioned by prosecutors. There are no words we can give to comfort his family in their moment of grief, but we must find out the truth about what drove him to his death.

What stands out the most are the words of Choi‘s older brother, who said the lieutenant “said he was being unjustly accused and under a lot of pressure.” In a press conference, the brother asked, “Don’t you think the investigation is running smoothly now? [My brother] went to his grave because they were trying to pin something on him that he didn‘t do. . . . He told me on the phone, ‘Somebody calls the shots for the prosecutors, and in the end the orders are all coming from higher ups. They’re putting the pieces together.’”

The suicide note Choi left behind explaining his painful decision.

According to what has emerged so far, Choi was detained by prosecutors on charges of leaking a Blue House document that had been brought to the information office by chief superintendent Park Kwan-cheon. He was eventually released when the arrest warrant request was dismissed. The reason given for the dismissal was a “lack of grounds for criminal charges.” This seems to suggest it was rejected because of the prosecutors’ hasty and overly ambitious investigation tactics.

With things already getting off to such a poor start for the prosecutors’ investigation of the report alleging government interference by Chung Yoon-hoi, who was Chief of Staff to President Park Geun-hye when she was a second-term lawmaker, it looks as though we can only expect more overreaching. At its core, this case is about an alleged monopoly on the government by a secret circle in the Blue House, with Park and her “triumvirate” of secretaries at the center of it. The source of the problem is Park’s insular management style, the way she handles virtually everything through those three men. And what has come to light as a result is a very serious situation of internal discord. President Park’s priorities should be confronting the problem and finding a political solution through personnel and system changes. Instead, her only concern seems to be the document leak, which she has called a “national scandal”; the heart of the problem is ignored. When she gets her priorities this scrambled, and when she starts dictating investigation guidelines, it’s scarcely any wonder that the prosecutors carrying out the investigation - or the people being investigated - feel so much “political pressure.”

Choi stood accused of leaking secrets in connection with his status as a civil servant. The document leak itself was something the Blue House already knew about as far back as June. At the time, the presidential office was aware of a hundred or so documents in circulation, but didn’t do anything. It is only now that the allegations about Chung have blown up that it’s making a big deal about it. In the process, a simple working-level information officer - someone nowhere near the heart of the case - was painted as the chief offender. It certainly would have made sense for Choi to have felt himself under intense psychological pressure. Can we truly say with confidence that the Blue House and prosecutors bear no responsibility for his death?

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]