Former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung's government secretly paid communist North Korea US$100 million to get Pyongyang to agree to a historic summit in 2000 that helped Kim win the Nobel Peace Prize, an investigator said yesterday.
Independent counsel Song Doo-hwan did not characterize the cash transfer as a payoff for the inter-Korean summit, but he said the government "aid" for communist North Korea was related to the meeting and had been sent secretly through improper channels.
Kim has admitted approving money transfers to North Korea despite "legal problems," but has said they were for the sake of peace and that his government's decision should not be subject to review.
Song had agreed not to consider whether the president himself was culpable. However, three of Kim's former aides have been arrested in the scandal.
Announcing the findings of a 70-day probe, Song said South Korea's Hyundai conglomerate sent US$500 million to North Korea, but he called US$400 million of that an investment by the company. The rest was sent by the government, via Hyundai, he said.
All of the money was sent to Pyongyang through Hyundai subsidiaries shortly before the June 2000 summit, Kim's crowning achievement that helped him win the peace prize, Song said.
"We viewed the money Hyundai sent to North Korea as advance business investment," Song told a nationally televised news conference. "The US$100 million the government sent to the North through Hyundai is characterized as a politically motivated government aid for the North."
Song accused Kim's government of "active involvement in the transfers of the money, keeping them secret from the people and failing to go through a justifiable procedure for sending the money."
"Thus we concluded that it cannot be denied that the money transfers were related to the summit," Song said.
The former president, who left office in February after a five-year tenure, had earlier admitted that his government approved Hyundai's money transfers to North Korea -- despite "legal problems" -- because they "facilitated peace on the Korean Peninsula."
But Kim said his government's decision should not be subject to judicial reviews, and Song agreed not to question the former president.
Song said Wednesday he has been careful to ensure that his investigation would not interrupt South Korea's efforts to seek reconciliation with the North after decades of Cold War animosity following the 1950-53 Korean War.
The investigation began when opposition leaders accused Kim's administration of paying bribes to the North to agree to the summit.
Hyundai says it gave the money to the North to secure business rights there covering tourism, railways and an industrial park.
Song had earlier arrested three of Kim's former aides on charges of persuading state-run Korea Development Bank to extend loans to the cash-strapped Hyundai, which then sent the money to the North.
One of them, Kim's former chief of staff Park Ji-won, was also accused of taking US$12.5 million in bribes from Hyundai.
By law, a special counsel is appointed by the president after the National Assembly passes a law calling for an independent investigation into a politically sensitive case.
Relations on the Korean Peninsula improved vastly immediately after the summit. But they deteriorated in Kim's final year, especially after the US said last October that North Korea admitted running a secret nuclear weapons program. The peninsula was divided in 1945.
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS