Probe launched for Kim’s sister
SEOUL: Seoul prosecutors have opened an unprecedented probe into North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister over Pyongyang’s blowing up of a liaison office last month, officials said yesterday.
The move is likely to infuriate the nuclear-armed North, which has repeatedly condemned South Korea in recent months, including directing personal insults at President Moon Jae-in.
Seoul Central District prosecutors received a criminal complaint against Kim Yo-jong from a Seoul-based lawyer and had started an investigation, a spokeswoman told AFP.
Last month, Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border, days after Kim Yo-jong — one of her brother’s closest advisers
— had said the “useless” property would soon be seen “completely collapsed”.
Before the demolition, it had issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of South Korea over anti-North leaflets that defectors send back across the heavily-militarised border — usually attached to balloons or floated in bottles.
It raised pressure further by threatening military measures against Seoul, but later said it had suspended those plans in an apparent sudden dialling-down of tensions.
In his complaint, lawyer Lee Kyungjae claimed the now-demolished liaison office was South Korean property as it was renovated using South Korean government funds, despite its being located in the North.
Ms Kim “used explosives to destroy” the South’s “quasi-diplomatic mission building that served the public interest”, he said in the complaint.
Mr Lee also filed a complaint against Pak Jongchon, chief of the general staff of the North Korean military.
Under South Korea’s criminal code, he stressed, damaging property or disturbing the peace using explosives was punishable by death, or can lead to a prison sentence of at least seven years.