A South Korean marine colonel who faced charges of insubordination and defamation after accusing President Yoon Suk Yeol of downplaying his investigation into the death of a marine was acquitted by a military court on Thursday.
AND public excitement about the case colonel, Park Jung-hun, rocked South Korea for months last year, prompting opposition lawmakers to introduce a bill to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate his allegations. The political confrontation intensified when Mr. Yoon vetoed the bill three times and the opposition threatened to impeach him.
Mr. Yoon ended up being revoked by the opposition-dominated National Assembly, but for another reason: his six-hour state of emergency last month, during which he was accused of sending troops into the Assembly, which he said tried to paralyze his government. He is also accused of ordering the arrests of his political enemies.
Months earlier, the opposition cited the prosecution of Colonel Park as an example of how Mr. Yoon’s government was abusing its powers to silence dissenting voices.
In its ruling on Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Seoul Central District Military Court acquitted Colonel Park of insubordination and defamation of senior military officers. He denied the charges, saying they were brought in retaliation for his efforts to hold senior South Korean Marine Corps officers accountable for the death of Lance Cpl. Chae Su-geun in July 2023.
Lance Corporal Chae and other Marines were sent to search for missing residents in central South Korea after the city was hit by floods, but were given no life jackets and ordered to wear knee-high rubber boots that impeded their movement as they waded through a waist-deep flash flood. Corporal Chae was taken away and later found dead.
Colonel Park, who led the investigation into the incident, concluded that eight superior officers, including Major General Im Seong-geun, commander of the 1st Marine Division, were responsible for the death of Corporal Chae due to negligence.
He later accused the Ministry of Defense of covering up his investigation and exonerating the supreme military leader. He blamed Mr. Yoon, who he said “went into a rage” after being told his report held senior commanders responsible for the deaths. Colonel Park cited the Marine Corps Commander-in-Chief as his source of knowledge of Mr. Yoon’s outburst, but the commander denied making such a statement.
Colonel Park said he had resisted pressure from the Ministry of Defense to clear the names of senior officers such as Major General Im as criminal suspects and had sent his files, as required by law, to the national police for further investigation. The Ministry of Defense withdrew the files and later sent police a revised version, which named only two of the original eight suspects, both of whom were junior colonels.
Mr. Yoon has not addressed Colonel Park’s allegations against him and has not been charged in the case. But Colonel Park was accused of defaming his superiors and disobeying an order to delay sending his files to the police.
In its ruling Thursday, the court-martial panel said the charge of insubordination could not stand because Marine leadership had no right to delay sending Colonel Park’s findings to the police. It also said there was insufficient evidence that the colonel intended to defame his superiors.
Opposition efforts to launch a parliamentary inquiry into Mr. Yoon’s role in Colonel Park’s case have been hampered by the political turmoil caused by his impeachment.
“It is a long way to know the truth about Corporal Chae’s death,” Colonel Park said at a news conference after Thursday’s verdict.
