According to reports on Oct. 17 by the Kyunghyang Shinmun and Maeil Shinmun, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office dismissed the complaint against Jeon, a former chair of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, on Sept. 29. The allegations included invalidating public documents and abuse of authority. Roh and Lee had already been cleared for insufficient evidence in July on charges of damaging public electronic records.

The decisions close out, after about four years, a set of complaints the family filed in October 2022 against senior Moon administration security officials. The reports reviewed did not describe how the family or the political parties responded to the latest decisions.

The case dates to September 2020, when Lee Dae-jun, an official with the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, went missing in waters near Socheong-do island in the West Sea. He was reportedly shot dead by North Korean troops and his body burned. The Coast Guard announced at the time that it believed he had tried to defect to the North to escape personal troubles.

After the change of government, the Board of Audit and Inspection began an audit in June 2022. The family then filed complaints on Oct. 6 of that year, alleging that officials had downplayed and concealed the incident and steered it toward a defection narrative.

What prosecutors decided

Jeon was accused of trying to delete reported details of the case, but prosecutors dismissed the complaint outright. Such a dismissal, known as gakha, ends a case on procedural grounds without ruling on the merits. Roh and Lee were accused of conspiring to delete intelligence held by the National Intelligence Service and the Defense Ministry after a National Security Council meeting, but were cleared for lack of evidence.

Former Coast Guard chief Kim Hong-hee was cleared for insufficient evidence of obstructing official duties and abuse of authority, while a charge of falsifying an official document was closed because prosecution was no longer possible. Former NIS director Park Jie-won and former national security adviser Seo Hoon were not indicted on Sept. 28 over a Board of Audit Act complaint that they ignored an audit questionnaire.

Moon was reported to have been cleared for insufficient evidence on July 22 over allegations that he approved concealing or downplaying the incident. Reports said only the type of each decision is known, not the detailed reasoning. Insight noted that the cases were being wrapped up around the time the new Public Prosecution Office launched on Oct. 2 following the restructuring of the prosecution service.

Issues that remain

Two questions have driven the dispute: whether the judgment that Lee tried to defect was reasonable, and whether officials actually tried to delete intelligence and reports after the shooting. The prosecutors' decisions suggest that most complaints on the second point could not be substantiated.

Courts ruled earlier. Five people indicted on charges of trying to conceal the shooting, including Seo and Kim, were acquitted on appeal, and reports say the acquittals became final after prosecutors gave up an appeal. The judges were reported to have found the defection judgment reasonable and held that the Coast Guard's announcement could not be called false.

A third perspective

Reactions to the outcome may diverge. From the complainants' side, there may be disappointment that criminal responsibility was not established even though the audit office had raised problems earlier. Those who viewed the case as politically motivated may read the courts' acquittals and now the prosecutors' decisions as pointing the same way. Neither side's official position appeared in the reports reviewed.

It is also worth distinguishing the types of decisions: a dismissal is a procedural closure, while a finding of no charge rests on an assessment of evidence. And the absence of criminal liability is not the same as a finding that the government's handling was appropriate, so political and historical judgments are likely to continue separately.