[Choice Times=Woong Kim, Attorney (Former People Power Party Lawmaker)]

In September 2020, several senior officials from the Moon Jae-in administration—Seo Hoon, former National Security Office chief at the Blue House; Park Jie-won, former director of the National Intelligence Service; Suh Wook, former minister of national defense; and Kim Hong-hee, former commissioner general of the Korea Coast Guard—were indicted on charges including the alleged cover-up of the “West Sea civil servant killing.” All were acquitted at the first trial.

The presiding judge was Ji Gwi-yeon, the chief judge currently handling President Yoon Suk-yeol’s insurrection-related case.

The case stems from an incident in September 2020, when Lee Dae-jun, a civil servant with the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, fell overboard from a patrol vessel in the West Sea, drifted at sea, and was shot dead by North Korean soldiers. At the time, the Moon administration announced that the incident was a case of the civil servant’s “voluntary defection to North Korea.” Shortly thereafter, claims were leaked suggesting that Lee had acted as he did because he was burdened by gambling debts. (Editor’s note)

The Democratic Party, it is said, held a briefing declaring victory after receiving a not-guilty verdict in the West Sea civil servant shooting case. Park Jie-won claimed he had defeated Yoon Suk-yeol. They proclaimed victory over what they called a “fabricating prosecution.”

A father of a young child drifted in the freezing sea, was shot to death, and his body was burned. And yet they cheer, shouting that they have won.

They labeled that father a gambling addict. They branded him a panic disorder patient. They framed him as a defector to North Korea. And they now call all of that a victory.

Yes. With this ruling, the fabrication of a “defection” carried out by the Democratic Party and the Moon administration has, in effect, been declared victorious. By this judgment, that father has now officially become a gambling-addicted panic disorder patient who was shot dead while defecting to North Korea, and North Korea’s burning of his body has, as Kim Eo-jun claimed, become a “quarantine measure.”

In the face of the Democratic Party’s victory declaration, we must reflect on the meaning of humanity itself.

And we must ask ourselves whether boasting of victory in the face of a father’s death can truly be called politics.

The People Power Party, to which I belong, does not, like the Democratic Party, denounce court rulings. But this must be corrected. This is the urgent reason our party must change.

If we do not change, we will hand power to such ruthless groups, and we will never be able to resolve the resentment of the West Sea civil servant.

Please, come to your senses, People Power Party.

#HumanityInPolitics #WestSeaIncident #MoralAccountability