Court approves second change in ex-spymaster's indictment

A Seoul court on Thursday accepted state prosecutors' second request to press additional charges against a former national intelligence chief accused of meddling in last year's presidential election.

Won Sei-hoon, who headed the National Intelligence Service (NIS) under former President Lee Myung-bak, was indicted in May on charges of leading an online smear campaign to sway public opinion ahead of the Dec. 19 poll in favor of President Park Geun-hye, the then ruling Saenuri Party candidate.

A team of state prosecutors investigating the case raised fresh allegations that the online campaign was not limited to comments posted on major Internet bulletin boards but extended to Twitter and other social networking sites. Altogether, 1.21 million such messages have been found posted or retweeted.

The Seoul Central District Court accepted the request from the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office to rewrite Won's indictment with new charges. The prosecution office alleged that the former NIS chief had orchestrated the illegal online campaign in its entirety.

The court, however, said it will hold hearings for only 26,550 posts out of the 1.21 million, excluding the ones that were retweeted or automatically tweeted by bogus Twitter accounts.

The court on Oct. 30 approved the first request by the prosecution team to amend Won's indictment on charges of ordering agents to post 55,000 such Twitter posts.

(Yonhap News)