[Editorial] When the Accused Knows Important People

"Yun" kept talking tough even after being detained by the prosecution. He threatened his investigator, suggesting he had the ability to turn Korean society inside out by revealing what he knew. He had just been arrested for being the big, well-connected influential middleman in a huge criminal case. He is not the first to threaten prosecutors with revealing harmful information about powerful people, but this time things are different.

He doesn't seem to be bluffing if you look at his pocket diary. It is packed with hundreds of phone numbers belonging influential individuals that include police, prosecutors, and people in politics and the military, so it is highly probable that little booklet was the "source of his income." You can't say someone is guilty of corruption just because his name appears in someone's pocket diary. Given Yun's "illegal lobbying" activities, however, things do smell suspicious. Every society's criminals operate on a scale that says something about that society. Yun is being called the "biggest criminal deal-maker alive in Korea today." If that's true, it means the case he has been implicated in could be a good chance to get a look at the chain of corruption that is intertwined through much of Korean society.

Key to the investigation will be figuring how where the hundreds of billions of won that was laundered at Kangwon Land came from and where it went. Yun is not engaged in any particular business of his own, and so the very fact he was moving around that much money has to mean that quite a lot of tainted cash went through his hands in the course of various illegal dealings. Whether money changed hands in the course of "ordering an investigation" from the police or not is also something that needs to be revealed. A large number of prosecution officials appear to have had inappropriate relationships with Yun as well, and the fact that he knew the investigation was coming and closed down his office and made other preparations suggests the possibility there are people in the prosecution who are on his side. The prosecution itself says that it is approaching this investigation as an exercise in "self-cleansing." "Cleansing" can only happen removing all that is shameful. We hope to see a strict and transparent investigation.

The Hankyoreh, 28 November 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]