Lee Si-won, a former presidential office secretary for public service discipline, and another ex-aide have been indicted on charges of leaking information related to the investigation into the death of Marine Cpl. Chae Su-geun.
The second comprehensive special prosecutor team led by Kwon Chang-young announced Thursday that it had indicted Lee and Lim Ki-hun, a former defense secretary at the National Security Office, without detention on charges of disclosing classified government information.
Lee is accused of receiving a report that North Gyeongsang Province police planned to conduct a search and seizure in connection with the death of Chae — who held the rank of private first class at the time — in September 2023, and then tipping off the Marine Corps in advance. The special prosecutor team believes Lee passed the search-and-seizure plans, which he had received from an official at the Korean National Police Agency's National Investigation Headquarters, to Lim, who in turn relayed the information to a Defense Ministry official, ultimately allowing it to reach the Marine Corps.
The special prosecutor team also indicted Choi Ju-won, former chief of the North Gyeongsang Province Police Agency, and No Gyu-ho, now head of the Police Investigation Training Institute and formerly the agency's investigation chief, without detention on charges of abuse of authority obstructing the exercise of rights. The two are accused of ordering investigators to return case files on the Chae incident — which had been transferred to the North Gyeongsang Province Police Agency — back to the Defense Ministry's prosecution unit. Prosecutors allege they abused their authority to obstruct investigators' rights despite knowing the return of the files was unlawful and improper.
Chae, then a private first class, died in July 2023 after being swept away by floodwaters while searching for missing civilians during heavy flooding in Yecheon-gun, North Gyeongsang Province. He was posthumously promoted to corporal.
"Through this investigation, we confirmed how the case files were retrieved by the Defense Ministry's prosecution unit after the Chae case was transferred to police, and how information about the subsequent search and seizure of the Marine Corps was leaked in advance," the special prosecutor team said. "We will do our utmost to prove the charges in the upcoming trial proceedings."
ikson@heraldcorp.com
