Prosecutors Summon Democratic Party Official for Investigation into Suspected Leak of Ssangbangwool North Korea Remittance Document

The prosecution investigating the 'Ssangbangwool North Korea remittance suspicion' has summoned a Democratic Party representative office official, who requested a Gyeonggi Province official document from a former public servant, as a suspect and conducted a prosecution investigation.

Suwon District Prosecutors' Office building exterior
[Photo by Yonhap News]

According to investigative authorities on the 21st, the Criminal Division 6 of Suwon District Prosecutors' Office (Chief Prosecutor Kim Young-nam) recently summoned Mr. A on charges of violating the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection and conducted a suspect investigation.

It is known that Mr. A requested former public servant Mr. B, who served as the Director of the Peace Cooperation Bureau of Gyeonggi Province at the time, to provide an official document in February to verify whether Representative Lee, who was then the Governor of Gyeonggi Province, was involved in the Ssangbangwool North Korea remittance suspicion.

The Ssangbangwool North Korea remittance suspicion involves Ssangbangwool illegally exporting foreign currency under the pretext of paying for the smart farm project ($5 million) and the Governor of Gyeonggi Province's visit to North Korea ($3 million), and giving it to North Korean officials instead.

The prosecution found that Mr. A asked Mr. B via Telegram to "find the official document in which Gyeonggi Province requests the governor's visit invitation to North Korea," and Mr. B conveyed this request to a fixed-term public servant in the Peace Cooperation Division of the Peace Cooperation Bureau of Gyeonggi Province.

The prosecution believes that Mr. A and others conspired to illegally access the internal network of the provincial office to privately use the official documents for the investigation and trial response of former Gyeonggi Province Deputy Governor for Peace Lee Hwa-young, who was arrested and indicted on charges including violation of the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act for remittance to North Korea.

The Democratic Party has denied the allegations related to the case, stating, "We only tried to confirm the facts due to media inquiries, and did not directly contact Gyeonggi Province officials or instruct them to illegally extract official documents from Gyeonggi Province."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.