Police to summon Assembly Speaker’s aide over election-day hacking

The police investigation into the election-day cyber attack against the national election watchdog has implicated another aide of a Grand National Party lawmaker, dealing a further blow to the conservative ruling party.

Police sources said Tuesday that investigators plan to summon for questioning an aide of Rep. Park Hee-tae, the National Assembly speaker and GNP member, as part of their inquiry into the hacking attack against the National Elections Committee’s website during the vote for Seoul mayor.

“We plan to summon Kim for questioning as a witness, because he, along with four others, had drinks with Gong on the eve of the Oct. 26 by-elections,” said sources at the National Police Agency’s cyber investigation unit, which leads the probe.

The Speaker’s office said Kim tendered his resignation Monday.

Gong, a staffer to GNP Rep. Choi Ku-shik until last month, is in police custody, accused of directing the cyber attack on the election watchdog in complicity with three others, which paralyzed the website for about two hours in the early morning of Oct. 26. By-elections took place across the nation that day, including one for Seoul mayor, where the GNP suffered a crushing defeat.

According to police sources, Gong asked a hometown friend running an IT firm, identified by surname Kang, over phone to hack into the election body’s website on election day. Kang and two of his employees mounted a distributed denial of service attack, or DDoS. The 27-year-old Gong denies his involvement, while the other three have pled guilty.

Gong placed the phone calls to order the cyber attack while he was with Kim and four others, drinking, police officials said.

Investigators had already interviewed the four participants in the drinking session and they all claimed no knowledge of the plan to attack the election watchdog’s homepage.

The case, having implicated two staffers of GNP legislators, is fast turning into a political bombshell, as investigators are focusing their inquiries on suspicions that higher-ups of the conservative party may have been involved.

Rep. Choi, Gong’s former employer, resigned as head of the GNP’s public affairs office after the scandal broke out. He had served as the campaign communications director for the GNP’s mayoral nominee, Na Kyung-won, in the Oct. 26 election. Na lost to Park Won-soon, a maverick backed by liberal opposition.

Police were looking into bank accounts and phone records of the suspects, trying to determine whether there were more involved. They are also trying to ascertain whether the suspects were behind a similar attack on the same day against the home page of then-mayoral candidate Park.

By Lee Sun-young
(milaya@heraldcorp.com)