[News Today] 81 POLICE INVESTIGATORS ON STANDBY

[LEAD]
Following the emergency martial law declaration, the Defense Counterintelligence Command requested 100 police investigators. This raised supicions that he tried to form an 'arrest team.' Police Commissioner General Cho Ji-ho reportedly ignored the request. However, a KBS investigation confirmed that 81 elite investigators from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency were in fact on standby in their offices.

[REPORT]
On the night of December 3, when emergency martial law was declared.

Yeo In-hyung, then chief of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, called Police Commissioner General Cho Ji-ho and asked him to have 100 police investigators ready.

Yeo said that the Defense Counterintelligence Command could set up a joint investigative team so police investigators were needed.

The police chief has insisted that he ignored the command's request.

Roh Jeong-hwan/ Lawyer for Police Commissioner General (Dec. 13)
Cho rejected all requests for dispatch of 100 police investigators and provisionof location information.

However. KBS has found that a list of 104 police investigators was made shortly after the declaration of martial law and among them, 81 investigators belonging to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's wide-area investigation unit were waiting in the office.

This means that a selection of elite investigators of the Seoul police agency were mobilized and put on standby.

This emergency stand-by came after the National Office of Investigation had asked the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency to draw up a list of some 100 investigators at 11:39 p.m. on December 3, an hour after the martial law declaration.

Some 40 minutes later, the head of the Seoul wide-are investigation unit made a list of investigators and ordered them to wait in the office.

KBS obtained the list of police investigators on standby.

It includes 104 investigators ranked as high as inspectors--20 from each of the five teams under the wide-area investigation unit.

Suspicions have risen that the Defense Counterintelligence Command asked for police assistance in order to operate a team tasked with arresting some politicians.

Prosecutors raided the National Office of Investigation on December 19 and seized the mobile phone of NOI chief Woo Jong-soo in a move to obtain evidence supporting the allegations.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said that the investigators were put on standby after vigilance was beefed up at midnight on December 4.

It added that it had not reported the list to the National Office of Investigation.

However, the NOI gave the emergency mobilization order even before the tightening of vigilance.