Suh Hoon, Kim Hong-hee Acquitted Again in West Sea Civil Servant Shooting Case; Court Says No False Facts Were Announced

[Financial News] Suh Hoon, former chief of the Blue House National Security Office, and Kim Hong-hee, former commissioner general of the Korea Coast Guard, who had been acquitted at first instance on charges of covering up the West Sea civil servant shooting incident, were also found not guilty on appeal.
Criminal Division 3 of the Seoul High Court, presided over by Judge Lee Seunghan, on the 16th acquitted Suh and Kim, who had been charged with falsifying and using false official documents, defamation, and defamation of the dead. Prosecutors had previously sought prison terms of 1 year and 6 months for Suh and 2 years for Kim.
The court said there was no evidence showing that the late Daejun Lee, then a civil servant at the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, had been found in North Korean waters after defecting voluntarily. It ruled that, to establish defamation of the dead, the Coast Guard's investigative findings would have had to be entirely false, but there was no material proving that.
The court explained, "The first investigative results announcement was a statement saying the Coast Guard would investigate because there was a possibility of voluntary defection, and it is difficult to see it as containing false facts," adding, "The second and third announcements do not confirm the truth through the Coast Guard's judgment that the deceased defected voluntarily."
It continued, "The circumstances cited as the basis for judging voluntary defection in the investigative results announcement cannot be said to have no basis at all or to be inconsistent with the facts," and added, "In this case, where there is no direct evidence, the assessment may have been hasty or criticized for using categorical language and exaggeration, but unless there are special circumstances, it is difficult to go further and conclude that false content was written that did not conform to the truth to the extent of harming public trust."
The court determined that the Coast Guard's announcements constituted opinions or assessments rather than statements of fact. It said, "The prosecution argued that each investigative results announcement could not be considered an opinion or assessment because it confirmed the relationship to the deceased's alleged voluntary defection. However, even when reading the announcements themselves, it is reasonable to interpret them as concluding that the deceased defected voluntarily based on the facts confirmed through the investigation, and that should be regarded as an opinion or assessment."
After the ruling, Suh told reporters, "The appellate court viewed the government's judgment as not wrong from the perspective of an average reasonable person," and added, "I once again pray for the soul of the deceased, who was an unjust victim, and extend my condolences to the bereaved family." Kim also said, "I hope this becomes an opportunity to restore, even a little, the honor of Coast Guard employees who suffered because of this case."
Lee Rae-jin, the older brother of Daejun Lee, said, "The first- and second-instance courts ignored the people and committed an anti-national act that forgot the reason for the state's existence," adding, "I will no longer ask domestic courts and instead plan to file a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other international judicial bodies to seek a ruling from them."
The West Sea civil servant shooting incident refers to the September 2020 killing of Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries official Lee by Korean People's Army soldiers in waters near Soyeonpyeong Island in Ongjin County, Incheon. Prosecutors suspected that the Moon Jae-in administration systematically downplayed and covered up the shooting, and brought Suh, then Director of the National Intelligence Service Park Jie-won, former Minister of National Defense Suh Wook, and former Chief of Staff to the Director of the National Intelligence Service No Eun-chae to trial.
The first-instance court acquitted all of them, finding that the defendants' intent to conceal the deletion of SI, or special handling information, had not been proven. Prosecutors appealed the ruling, but only against Suh Hoon and Kim Hong-hee.
theknight@fnnews.com Jung Kyung-soo Reporter