Last March, ahead of the presidential election, the prosecution, which is investigating the circumstances of the 'false reports' related to the Daejang-dong incident suspected to have been written to lower the approval rating of Yoon Seok-yeol, then the People Power Party candidate, has focused on the fact that these articles were recommended as nominees for the Korea Journalists Association's 'Journalist of the Month' award and has confirmed the award application commendation statements.
According to a compilation of Asia Economy's coverage on the 6th, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office's special investigation team for the 'Presidential Election Interference Public Opinion Manipulation Case' (led by Kang Baek-shin, head of the Anti-Corruption Investigation Division 3) has constructed the facts based on the commendation statements submitted to the association when the articles suspected of being false reports were recommended as nominees for the 'Journalist of the Month' award and has initiated a compulsory investigation. Based on this, the investigation team conducted raids on former and current reporters affiliated with Newstapa, JTBC on September 14, and on Kyunghyang Shinmun, Newsbus, and Report Act on the 26th of last month. Recently, it is reported that they are cross-verifying the results derived from analyzing other seized materials with the contents of the commendation statements to check whether the reporters attempted to distort the coverage during their reporting. The intention appears to be to cross-verify the overall process from the start of the investigation, reporting and presentations to the company, to the sources met during the investigation and the information confirmed from them, through to the reporting.
The 'Journalist of the Month' award is given by the Journalists Association to reporters who have produced the most valuable domestic news articles recognized within a month. Nominees are recommended at the beginning of each month, and the winners are selected after evaluation. The media company must submit a commendation statement recording the 'circumstances leading to the article' and the 'investigation process' when applying for the award. To gain credibility and favorable evaluations during the judging process, the commendation statements are generally written in detail. These statements are publicly available on the Journalists Association's website for anyone to view, allowing the prosecution to access them immediately without the need for raids.
The articles suspected by the prosecution were also recommended as nominees the month after their publication. The reporters who covered these articles commonly wrote in their commendation statements that "they started the investigation after receiving an initial tip from someone and actually met Jo Woo-hyung, the 'loan broker' who would best know whether President Yoon Seok-yeol was the chief prosecutor who made coffee at the time." A prosecution official also confirmed, "We verified that Jo Woo-hyung had interviews with several media outlets."
First, JTBC reporter Bong Ji-wook and others submitted 14 articles related to the Daejang-dong prosecution investigation, written between February 18 and March 7, 2022, as nominees for the February 2022 Journalist of the Month award. The prosecution suspects the article '[Exclusive] The 'Daejang-dong Fund Manager' who escaped punishment by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's Central Investigation Department... Appeared in Jung Young-hak's recording' published by reporter Bong on February 21, 2022, as a false report. The prosecution's judgment is that despite meeting Jo Woo-hyung in October 2021 and hearing explanations such as 'I have never met prosecutor Yoon Seok-yeol,' reporter Bong omitted this and reported with the implication that "the chief prosecutor who made coffee was President Yoon."
In the commendation statement, reporter Bong wrote that the investigation was based on Nam Wook's interrogation records and the meeting with Jo Woo-hyung. "In October 2021, I interviewed Mr. Jo for about two hours at an undisclosed location. Although he claimed he was not a key figure, he gave specific statements about other members such as Jung Young-hak," he explained. He added, "Mr. Jo testified in detail about the background of being investigated by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's Central Investigation Department and hiring lawyer Park Young-soo, and about being acquitted by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office and the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office but later convicted by the Suwon District Court in 2015." Reporter Bong also noted, "Afterwards, Mr. Jo disappeared, so I met with his company's executives and employees to hear more detailed testimonies." The JTBC Truth Investigation Committee announced in its interim report last month that "distortions and patchwork were found in reporter Bong's coverage" and "confirmed that the interview and interrogation records of the person involved, Mr. Jo, were omitted or distorted." However, the investigation process or content related to this is not found in reporter Bong's commendation statement.
Similarly, reporters from Kyunghyang Shinmun, who are also under suspicion by the prosecution, submitted articles reporting on allegations of the prosecution's inadequate investigation into the 'Busan Savings Bank Daejang-dong loan' as nominees for the October 2021 Journalist of the Month award and explained their contributions. The prosecution suspects that there were distortions of facts in a series of Daejang-dong related reports published by Kyunghyang Shinmun over several days. The reporters wrote, "The tip was at the level of suspicion, and since the broker (Jo Woo-hyung)'s basic information was not included, we secured statements from Daejang-dong development project company officials that Jo Woo-hyung received 1 billion won as a reward after the PF loan." The reporters further explained the investigation process: "After persuasion, we met Mr. Jo and heard about the situation at the time, and also met Lee Kang-gil of the project company C7. Additional investigation led us to believe it was difficult to think that the prosecution was unaware of the existence of illegal loan brokerage fees. The chief prosecutor who usually approves account tracking warrants was former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol."
Legal and media circles are closely monitoring the investigation, anticipating that the number of media outlets under investigation by the prosecution may increase beyond the current five. The commendation statements of JTBC and Kyunghyang Shinmun also mention the names of other media outlets that reported similar articles, raising the possibility of additional raids by the prosecution on these outlets.
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