Seoul Mayor Park’s Chief of Staff a Key Person in the Spy Case of North Korea’s Communist Party Branch in South Korea

2020-7-16, Media Watch [TRANSLATION]

The last person who had contact with Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon before he was reported missing (police say his body found and was a suicide) was Koh Han-suk (고한석, 高漢碩·55), Park’s former Chief of Staff.  It is confirmed that Koh Han-suk was one of the key figures in the 1992 “Central Regional Party of the Korean Workers’ Party in South Korea” spy case (남조선 노동당 중부지역당 간첩단 사건) or Central Region Party case (중부지역당 사건) for short.

[Note:  Koh Han-suk was at Park Won-soon’s residence on the morning of Park’s disappearance.  Koh was seen leaving Park’s residence around 10:10 a.m. on July 9, 2020.  34 minutes later at 10:44, someone who appeared to be Park was seen on a cc camera near his residence walking away from his residence.]

North Korea sent a senior agent Lee Sun-sil (이선실), who ranked 22nd in the Korean Workers’ Party in North Korea, to South Korea.  She recruited Hwang In-oh (황인오) as the chief organizer.  Hwang recruited over 300 members from dozens of companies and organizations in major cities, including Seoul, and conducted espionage operations.  This case is the Central Region Party case.  The Agency for National Security Planning (ANSP) (국가안전기획부) (today’s National Intelligence Service or NIS) uncovered their espionage activities on October 6, 1992.  It is often regarded as the largest espionage case after the Namrodang (남로당) incident.

According to the ANSP announcement at the time, Mr. Hwang In-oh was appointed as the person in charge by Lee Sun-sil, received training in North Korea, and returned to South Korea to form the Central Region Party of the Korean Workers’ Party (the name of the communist party of North Korea is the Korean Workers’ Party or the Workers’ Party of Korea).  It is known that Park Won-soon’s former chief of staff Ko Han-seok was a Ph.D. student at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Seoul National University at that time and was in charge of the editorial production department under the Central Region Party.  Every member of the Central Region Party pledged allegiance to Kim Il-sung, so Koh likely had done the same.

Koh Han-seok

Koh was sentenced to 1 year and 6 months in prison for the Central Region Party case, but in his appeals, he was released on 3 years of probation (in lieu of 1 year and 6 months in jail). However, Koh caused further controversy when he was caught while attempting to smuggle out his colleague’s secret order document in his rectum.

{Hankyoreh Newspaper, May 16, 1993 above, the red underlined paragraph:  Just prior to Koh’s release from jail at 10 p.m. on May 13, 1993 on probation, “2 green capsules with the original contents removed and replaced with memo papers, 1.5 cm x 23.6 cm [0.6 in. x 9.3 in.], written in pencil and hidden in his rectum, were discovered during a physical examination.”

“The prosecutors revealed a part of the contents, which were organizational secrets exposed during the prosecutors’ investigations, ANSP’s method of tracking spy organizations, how their cells were exposed, their requests, etc., which, if typed, would take up 5 pages, but were written in the small memo pages in tiny letters.”

“The prosecutors revealed that in the memo’s “request” section, Hwang In-wook [the writer of the content, chief editor of the Central Region Party,  the younger brother of Hwang In-oh] specified, ‘I didn’t confess about Jusapa organizations within the schools’ and ‘alert (name blocked out) involved in the U.S. Cultural Center incident [arson, attacks], (name blocked out) involved in TongHyukDang (Revolutionary Unification Party) incident, and (name blocked out) in a media company, since ANSP is tracking them for suspicions of spying.’”}

After finishing his probation, Koh quit his Ph.D. program at Seoul National University and received a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School at Harvard University.  He then joined SK and worked as the China IT/Internet business planning team leader for 4 years in China.  After the founding of the Uri Party (Our Party) during the Roh Moo-hyun administration, he devoted himself to politics, where he was a policy researcher for the open policy institute (열린정책연구원) [now the Institute for Democracy, under the ruling Democratic Party of Korea] and vice president for the Institute for Democracy (민주연구원).

Last year, Koh developed a full-fledged relationship with Mayor Park Won-soon when Koh was the chairman of the Seoul Digital Foundation.  Koh was appointed as Mayor Park’s Chief of Staff in April 2020.

[The above “self-input” mini bio of Ko Han-suk is on Naver, a popular South Korean portal.  Translation below:]

Experience

• 2020-4 to 2020-7    Chief of Staff, Seoul Metropolitan City Mayor’s Office
• 2019-5 to 2020-4 Chairman, Seoul Digital Foundation
• 2017-2 to 2019-5 Institute for Democracy (민주연구원), [Democratic Party of Korea]
• 2005-1 to 2006-9 Researcher, Policy Planning, open policy institute (열린정책연구원)
• 2003-12 to 2005-1 Global Business G5, Samsung Networks
• 2000-5 to 2003-10 Head, Business Planning Team, SK

Education

• 1997-99    MPP, Kennedy School of Public Policy, Harvard University
• 1988-90 Master’s degree, Chinese Language and Literature, Seoul National University
• 1984-88 BA, Chinese Language and Literature, Seoul National University

Self Input 2020-4-27

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Source:  http://mediawatch.kr/news/article.html?no=254900