In 2019, two North Korean fishermen confessed to murdering 16 shipmates before they fled to South Korea by boat and sought asylum. The then-progressive government in the South denied them refugee status or a trial there and, in an unprecedented move, sent them back to the North.
That decision triggered not only a political firestorm at the time but also criminal charges against four senior officials prosecuted after the current conservative government, with a more hard-line stance against North Korea, took power in Seoul in 2022.
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel in the Seoul Central District Court found the four top national security aides to former President Moon Jae-in guilty of abusing their official power when they sent the fleeing North Korean fishermen back. The court announced prison sentences but decided not to impose them immediately, indicating in its verdict that it considered the criminal charges against the officials to be politically motivated under Mr. Moon’s successor, President Yoon Suk Yeol.
The four former officials — Mr. Moon’s national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong; his director of national intelligence, Suh Hoon; his presidential chief of staff, Noh Young-min; and his unification minister, Kim Yeon-chul — were sentenced to six to 10 months in prison. But the sentences were suspended for two years, after which they will be removed.
The criminal charges the four faced were the first of their kind in South Korea and reflect the polarization between the country’s two main political parties when it comes to dealing with its decades-old foe North Korea.
When South Korea captured the two North Korean fishermen, then ages 22 and 23, in its waters in 2019, they were no ordinary defectors. They confessed that they fled after killing the captain and 15 other crewmen on their boat with hammers, dumping their bodies into the sea.
South Korea had no treaty with North Korea for extraditing criminal suspects. Under its Constitution, it must treat North Koreans as its citizens and, until then, had accepted all North Korean asylum-seekers, regardless of their background. But this time, Mr. Moon’s government decided to repatriate them to the North, calling them “heinous criminals.”
The two were denied access to lawyers or a chance at court to appeal the government’s decision to repatriate them. Five days after they were captured, they were taken, blindfolded and with their hands tied, to the inter-Korean border. One of them resisted when he saw what was happening, and had to be dragged by South Korean officials to be handed over to their North Korean counterparts.
Critics of Mr. Moon’s government accused it of denying the two fishermen a fair trial in the South and sending them to certain executions in the North in order to advance its policy of improving ties with the North. Mr. Moon’s government argued that there was no way for South Korea to serve justice for the two North Koreans through its judicial system because all key criminal evidence against them was in the North.
Prosecutors initially decided not to bring charges against the aides to Mr. Moon who were involved in the decision. But things changed after Mr. Yoon took office in 2022.
Mr. Yoon, a fierce critic of Mr. Moon’s North Korea policy, cited the case of the fishermen as a prime example of ignoring the human rights of asylum seekers for the sake of political appeasement. Under Mr. Yoon, the Unification Ministry, which had supported the repatriation, released video footage and photos showing the two North Koreans being led, against their will, to the borderline.
In their ruling on Tuesday, the judges said that the former officials denied the fishermen their right to a fair trial in South Korea. But they also suspected a political motive behind the charges, citing Mr. Yoon’s comments on the case and the prosecutors’ decision to reverse their earlier position not to press charges.
In South Korea, sitting presidents have long been accused of weaponizing prosecutors to discredit their predecessors’ governments with criminal charges, creating a vicious circle of political vengeance. Mr. Yoon himself is now suspended from office and faces criminal charges tied to his ill-fated declaration of martial law in December.
The judges said South Korea should develop guidelines that could help its officials deal with cases like the two North Korean fishermen.
Without such rules, “there is no guarantee that similar confusion won’t repeat itself should the same or a similar case happen again,” the judges said.
Prosecutors have a week to appeal the ruling.
