EX.SECURITY OFFICIALS’ RESIDENCE RAIDED

[Anchor Lead]

Prosecutors on Tuesday raided the residences of former spy agency chief Park Jie-won and former defense minister Suh Wook as part of an investigation into the 2020 death of a South Korean public official by North Korean troops in the West Sea. This comes a month after the National Intelligence Service was also raided.

[Pkg]

Prosecutors have raided the homes of former NIS chief Park Jie-won, former defense minister Suh Wook, and former national security adviser Suh Hoon. Investigators were dispatched Tuesday morning to a dozen locations, including the residences and offices of related figures in a bid to secure evidence. Park is accused of illegally deleting an intelligence report at the time of the fishery official Lee Dae-jun's death in September 2020. Ex-defense minister Suh is suspected of ordering the deletion of military secrets including wiretapped information from the Military Intelligence Management System. The NIS believes that classified information was deleted from the management system around the time a related ministerial meeting was held on September 23, 2020, a day after the fishery official's death. The meeting was attended by Park and Suh, as well as former security adviser Suh Hoon, former presidential chief of staff Noh Young-min and former unification minister Lee In-young. The former defense chief, after first being briefed on Lee’s disappearance, is also known to have ordered ministry officials to check whether Lee had possibly attempted to defect to North Korea. After analyzing data obtained from Tuesday's raid, prosecutors are expected to summon Park and Suh for questioning in the near future.