High-ranking Officials’ Crime Investigation Agency Raids Coast Guard over ‘West Sea Public Official Shooting Perjury’

Raids Conducted at Incheon Coast Guard and Other Locations

The High-ranking Officials' Crime Investigation Agency has begun a compulsory investigation into Park Sangchun, former chief of the Jeju Regional Coast Guard, on charges of perjury related to the shooting death of a public official in the West Sea.

High-Ranking Officials' Crime Investigation Department. Yonhap News Agency

According to legal sources on July 16, the Fourth Investigation Division of the agency, led by Deputy Chief Prosecutor Cha Jeonghyeon, conducted searches and seizures at the main office of the Korea Coast Guard and Incheon Coast Guard.

The search targets reportedly included Park's mobile phone, work diary, email, and messenger records.

Earlier, Park was accused of perjury during a special parliamentary committee investigating allegations of politically motivated prosecution manipulation by the Yoon Suk-yeol administration's prosecutors.

The Korea Coast Guard had announced in September 2020 that Lee Daejun, an official from the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries who was shot and killed by North Korean soldiers in the West Sea, was presumed to have defected to the North. However, in June 2022, after the launch of the Yoon administration, the investigation results were overturned, stating that "no intent to defect was found."

The West Sea public official shooting case refers to the incident in which Lee Daejun from the West Sea Fisheries Management Division of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries went missing in waters south of Soyeonpyeong Island, Ongjin County, Incheon, and was found dead by North Korean gunfire in North Korean waters the following day. At the time of the reversal of the investigation's conclusion, Park Sangchun was the chief of Incheon Coast Guard and was responsible for the briefing.

Yoon Sunghyun, former chief of the Coast Guard’s Criminal Intelligence Bureau who led the first investigation, claimed during a National Assembly audit and elsewhere that the day before the briefing, Park confided to him, "I have no intention of making an official announcement, but I am doing it because the chief ordered it. I have never conducted an investigation before, I don't even know the 'i' in investigation, but I don't think there's any other choice for now."

In response to these revelations by Yoon during the National Assembly's special investigation this April, Park said, "I don’t remember," and denied allegations that there had been intervention from higher authorities in the reversal of the investigation's findings.

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