(Editorial) Only independent investigation can reveal the truth about the cover-up of the deaths of Marines

Provincial police investigating the death of a marine surnamed Chae who died during rescue work after a flood in July 2023 released the results of their investigation, which exonerated the deceased’s former division commander, Lim Seong-geun.

Almost all of the evidence, including the field commanders’ statements and telephone conversations from the time, as well as the circumstances of the search, prove that Lim was negligent. However, after the investigation dragged on for nearly a year, the police recommended that the field commanders be charged, but exempted Lim from those charges. This is exactly the outcome that the parties who applied external pressure during the initial investigation into Chae’s death had hoped for. It is difficult to comprehend that the police expect the public to believe such an obvious miscarriage of justice.

The Gyeongbuk Provincial Police Department, which is in charge of the investigation, could not provide a logical explanation on Monday for its decision not to press charges against Lim.

While police acknowledged that Lim acted as a commander on the ground by visiting the flood site in Yecheon where Chae was swept away and giving detailed instructions on how to conduct the search, police also said, “Issuing orders on the ground may be considered ‘outside’ his authority, but it was not an ‘abuse of power.'” In other words, Lim did not abuse his authority because it was not his authority to exercise it anyway.

In addition, police explained that when Lim told field commanders to search for missing persons by “spreading out evenly, sniffing everywhere thoroughly” and wearing “chest-high waders,” this did not necessarily mean that Lim meant the search should be conducted in the water.

The reasoning is that these words appear in military manuals and are common in search operations, but were misunderstood by the field commanders. The field commanders, as brigadier generals and battalion commanders, have more than enough experience in the field. If all these officers misunderstood the division commander’s instructions, can we then speak of a well-functioning military?

The biggest winner in the police investigation is President Yoon Suk-yeol. The decision to exclude Lim from the prosecution appears to have been made to prevent Yoon from being accused of pressuring the original investigation.

Yoon is suspected of ordering Lim’s exclusion from the indictment. He reportedly said: “If a division commander is charged with something like this, who would want to be a division commander in the Republic of Korea?”

This outcome was all too predictable since the police, at the behest of the President’s Office, handed over the results of the internal Marines investigation led by Park Jeong-hun, the former head of the Marines investigation team, after they were legally transferred to the Defense Ministry’s prosecutor’s office. The results of the police investigation have shown that a special investigation by an independent lawyer is urgently needed.

The suspicion that Park’s investigation was covered up on the orders of external forces is supported by a number of pieces of evidence that came to light during Park’s insubordination trial. In fact, the outcome of the police investigation itself supports the notion that the Defense Ministry’s “no charges” order was undue pressure from outside. This is because the very same people that the Marines’ investigation team had referred to the police for investigation were arrested. The Office for Combating Corruption Among Senior Officials must speed up its own investigation into the alleged cover-up.

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