The National Police Agency's truth committee on unresolved questions of recent Korean history is reinvestigating what is known as the "Gang Gi Hun's ghostwritten suicide note case," and has announced that it has obtained the handwriting of Kim Gi Seol from when he was in the military. That makes it more likely that the country will be able to determine whether Gang wrote the note Kim left behind before his act of self-immolation. Handwriting analysis cannot be perfect, but more accurate analysis is made possible when there is more material for comparison.
In May of 19991 Gang, an officer in the National Korean Democratic Campaign Union (Jeon Min Ryeon) was found guilty of aiding and abetting Kim's suicide by self-immolation, and the judgment was controversial at the time, as well. The accusations came at a time when there were a series of self-immolations, and they resulted in hurting the moral standing of those opposed to the government at the time and suspicion of the purity of intention behind those self-immolations.
The problem, however, is the prosecution's attitude. The police commission has been asking for the original note and other material but the prosecution is not responding, saying that it would be inappropriate for either the police or the prosecution to reinvestigate a case that already went all the way to the Supreme Court. The prosecution's attitude is that it will cooperate if a committee is later formed in accordance with the law on resolving issues from the past.
It is not making a convincing argument. The key to this case is handwriting analysis, and as long as the analysis is performed properly the question of who does it does not have to be a serious issue. Furthermore the prosecution's approach to finding the truth about the past differs from the Ministry of National Defense, the National Intelligence Service, and the National Police Agency. That is why it is being accused of obstructing the effort of finding the truth instead of just being disinterested.
The confrontation between the police and prosecution over readjusting the parameters of their investigative authority should not, even by chance, become an obstacle to investigating the unanswered issues of the past. The prosecution should actively cooperate in clarifying the truth about whether or not Kim's note was written by someone else, and it should do so also for the sake of avoiding misunderstanding.
The Hankyoreh, 23 September 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Prosecution Must Cooperate on 'Suicide Note' |
