Also Charged with Violating the Aviation Safety Act and the Military Bases and Installations Protection Act
The investigative authorities have moved to secure the custody of a graduate student identified as the main culprit in the North Korean drone intrusion incident. They determined that this was a crime that heightened inter-Korean tensions and put the public in danger, and applied the crime of aiding the enemy.
The joint military-police investigative task force (TF) announced on the 20th that it had requested an arrest warrant for Mr. Oh, a man in his 30s and a graduate student, on charges of the general crime of aiding the enemy, violating the Aviation Safety Act, and violating the Military Bases and Installations Protection Act. The TF explained, "We requested a pre-arrest warrant for the main suspect among the civilian suspects, who poses a high risk of destroying evidence, and the request was filed today."
A joint military-police investigative task force (TF) is moving seized items from the engineering building of a university in Seoul that the suspect, Mr. Oh, attended in January. Yonhap News
This is the first time the TF has moved to secure the custody of a suspect under its investigation. Mr. Oh is currently an unapprehended suspect, and the pre-arrest suspect interrogation (substantive warrant review) is expected to take place early next week.
According to the police, the drone flown by Mr. Oh was programmed to depart from Ganghwa Island in Incheon, pass through Kaesong City and Pyeongsan County in North Korea, and then return to Paju City in Gyeonggi Province. The police determined that Mr. Oh flew the drone four times to test its performance with the aim of obtaining economic gain through a drone business. A TF official said, "By prompting actions such as North Korea's issuance of a denunciation statement, he heightened tensions between the two Koreas and placed the public in danger," and added, "We judge that he harmed military interests by exposing military matters of the armed forces and thereby bringing about changes in their readiness posture."
So far, the investigative authorities have booked seven suspects: the main culprit Mr. Oh; Mr. Jang, the head of the drone manufacturer Estel Engineering that produced the drone; Mr. Kim, who styled himself as the company's director in charge of North Korea-related affairs; Mr. A, an eighth-grade general service employee at the National Intelligence Service (NIS) who was found to have financial ties with Mr. Oh; Captain B from the Army Special Warfare Command (Special Forces), who is a schoolmate of Mr. Oh and accompanied him when he flew the drone; and Major C and Captain D from the Defense Intelligence Command.
The TF suspects that Mr. A may have engaged in financial transactions with Mr. Oh in an attempt to build a relationship with him early on, in anticipation that Mr. A would later take on covert operations work. However, the NIS has flatly dismissed this, stating that even if general service employee Mr. A were promoted, he would not be able to hold intelligence posts involving covert operations, which are carried out by special service personnel.
The Defense Intelligence Command is reported to take the position that it recruited Mr. Oh as a kind of collaborator in order to operate a "cover newspaper company" so that operatives could conduct intelligence-gathering activities under the pretense of reporting, using fake press identification cards.
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