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Baek Jong-chun (L) and Cho Myoung-gyon, national security aides for late former President Roh Moo-hyun (Yonhap) |
The Supreme Court on Thursday finalized suspended prison terms handed down to two former presidential officials for destroying the minutes of the 2007 inter-Korean summit to cover up then President Roh Moo-hyun's alleged offer to surrender the de facto western sea border.
Upholding a lower court's ruling, the top court sentenced Baek Jong-chun and Cho Myoung-gyon -- national security aides for the late former president -- to one year in prison, suspended for two years. The ruling comes nearly 10 years after indictment.
The two were indicted in November 2013 on charges of violating the Act on the Management of Presidential Archives and damaging public digital records amid a lingering political debate over Roh's potentially controversial remarks during the summit talks with then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2007.
The scandal began in October 2012 when a lawmaker from the then main opposition Saenuri Party claimed during a parliamentary audit that the late liberal president suggested giving up the de facto western sea border with North Korea, commonly called the Northern Limit Line (NLL), during the talks.
The North argues the line should be drawn farther south, as it was set unilaterally by the U.S.-led United Nations Command after the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Renouncing it would have meant offering the North a greater share of the Yellow Sea.
As lawmakers failed to find the transcript in question from the Presidential Archives, the party filed a criminal complaint against Baek and Cho, arguing they intentionally destroyed the summit transcript to cover up the president's remarks.
The lower courts had initially acquitted both of them, accepting their claims that the deleted minutes were just an unofficial draft document, not the final version considered official presidential records.
But the Supreme Court remanded the case in 2020, and the two were convicted in a retrial in February. (Yonhap)
