'Seoul City Official Spy Fabrication' Investigation Prosecutor 'No Charges'...Prosecution "No Evidence Found"

Victim Yoo Woo-sung of the 'Seoul City Government Official Spy Fabrication Case.' (Photo by Yonhap News)

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Prosecutors who investigated the ‘Seoul City Public Officials Spy Fabrication’ case were cleared of charges related to allegations of evidence fabrication that arose from the case.

According to the legal community on the 2nd, the Criminal Division 1 of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office (Chief Prosecutor Jinwoong Jeong) decided not to indict two prosecutors from the investigation team at the time on charges of false accusation and fabrication under the National Security Act due to insufficient evidence in April.

Previously, two National Intelligence Service (NIS) investigators involved in the case were indicted without detention, leading some to criticize the prosecution for protecting its own members.

In response, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office explained, "There was no evidence or intent sufficient to warrant criminal punishment, so a non-prosecution disposition was made," and added, "The prosecutors involved in the case were disciplined for violating their official duties by neglecting verification procedures when submitting evidence."

The ‘Seoul City Public Officials Spy Fabrication’ case emerged when Yoo Woosung, a Chinese-Korean defector, was arrested and indicted in 2013 on charges of violating the National Security Act for allegedly passing information about North Korean defectors in South Korea to the North Korean Security Department through his younger sibling Yoo Garyeo, while working as a contract public official for Seoul City since 2011.

The prosecution indicted Yoo based on Yoo Garyeo’s testimony, but the Supreme Court acquitted Yoo after it was revealed that the border crossing records between North Korea and China submitted by the prosecution to the appellate court were fabricated.

During the trial, Yoo Garyeo revealed that he was interrogated for six months at the NIS Joint Interrogation Center without legal counsel and subjected to harsh treatment including verbal abuse and physical assault, which led to false testimony.

As the controversy grew, the prosecution formed an internal fact-finding team in 2014 and investigated, indicting two NIS employees without detention. However, the two prosecutors in charge of Yoo’s case were cleared of charges.

Later, at the end of 2017, the case became the subject of investigation by the Past Affairs Committee of the Prosecution, established to uncover past human rights violations and abuses of prosecutorial power.

The Past Affairs Committee announced last year that "the prosecutors involved neglected their duties to protect human rights and maintain objectivity, thereby allowing the NIS’s human rights violations and evidence fabrication to continue, and provided opportunities for ongoing attempts at evidence fabrication by the NIS."

After the Past Affairs Committee’s announcement, Yoo filed complaints against the NIS investigators and prosecutors at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, but the prosecution again decided not to indict for the same reasons as during the previous fact-finding investigation.