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The National Intelligence Service Truth Committee probing dark episodes in the secret service¡¯s past on Wednesday announced a finding that the Korean Central Intelligence Agency handled an investigation under the Park Chung-hee administration, "along pre-determined lines at the orders of the man in power." It found that the KCIA tortured suspects to extract confessions in an attempt to make their organizations look like insurgencies.
In October 1973, students staged large demonstrations against Park Chung-hee that began with leaflets in the name of the National Democratic Young Student League scattered around campuses, and in April 1974 the KCIA arrested 253 members of the league and 22 others it said were members of the banned People's Revolutionary Party, announcing they attempted ¡°rebellion.¡± Seven People's Revolutionary Party defendants and one Democratic Young Student League defendant were executed in 1975, a mere 18 hours after their death sentences were confirmed by the Supreme Court, giving rise to charges of judicial murder.
The committee says it found no documents with a direct order, but added that for various reasons it is ¡°reasonable to assume¡± that Park ordered the executions.
In the same case, a Presidential Commission on Suspicious Deaths concluded in 2002 that the charges were trumped-up by the then-administration with the use of torture. Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan and others involved in the National Democratic Young Student League were recognized as democracy activists in December.
There is therefore no dissent that the charges were trumped up on the orders of the Park Chung-hee government. If the NIS probe was to be worth the taxpayers¡¯ money spent on it, it should have unearthed documents or testimony resolving precisely where the fabricated charges originated and who ordered the executions. What the Truth Committee has produced instead is circumstantial evidence and inference. The committee has issued a report of 190-plus pages of A4 paper, most of which is a rehash of already published records of earlier investigations and trials.
Such flimsy findings could have been predicted, given that the committee consists of civil activists, religious leaders and lawyers, but counts no experts in criminal investigation among its members. That the committee failed to investigate former presidential aides and other officials to find one who would support its conclusion that the president ordered the execution is tantamount to admitting that it doesn¡¯t know the first thing about investigation. Will the countless other truth commissions this administration has tasked with going over the same ground now come up with proper results?
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