Director of NIS Received Billions from SK during DJ Administration

On October 6, Ham Seung-hee, Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) representative claimed at the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee inspection on the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office, “During the Kim Dae-jung administration, the director of National Intelligence Services received several billion won from SK Group.”

Ham questioned Prosecutor General Song Kwang-soo, “Concerning the bribery issue, Lee Sang-soo (former secretary general of MDP), general affair committee chairman of the People’s Participatory United New Party, admitted to the acceptance of an unexpected amount of money from SK group. It was also proven that not only party members received a few billion won but also the Director of NIS under the former President Kim administration. Is this all true?”

Prosecutor General Song answered, “I cannot answer that right now in such settings.”

After the inspection, Ham held an interview session with Dong-a Ilbo and said, “We found out that SK Group’s CEO Son Gil-seung confessed to the prosecution that he had indeed handed over a few billion won to then director of NIS. I believe the prosecution will inevitably investigate this issue.”

He added, “The fact that the Prosecutor General did not answer furthermore shows that the suspicion of bribery regarding the former director of NIS is true. The money that SK Group handed over to the director falls under the category of bribery.”

Ham asked Song, “Is it true that Kim Chang-geun confessed that among SK’s shipping bribe of 280 billion won, ten billion won of it was used for political funding?” Song replied, “I cannot answer the question because we are currently under investigation.”

Meanwhile surrounding Ham’s claims, lawmaker Chun Young-taek’s staff said, “We are unrelated to this issue. It has been confirmed that Mr. Ham was not referring to Mr. Chun.”

Former lawmaker, Lee Jong-chan’s staff also said, “We have nothing to do with this matter. We do not know why SK issue is being brought up now when it happened so long ago.”

Lim Dong-won and Shin Gun, former directors of NIS, could not be reached by phone until the afternoon that day.