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| Rhyu Si-min, chairman of the Roh Moo-hyun foundation, accuses KBS of leaking a witness interview during an Alileo live YouTube broadcast, Tuesday. Captured from Alileo YouTube video |
By Lee Suh-yoon
There is a growing controversy over whether reporters at public broadcaster KBS gave excerpts of an interview with a key witness in the investigation of Justice Minister Cho Kuk's family to the prosecution.
On Tuesday, former liberal politician and writer Rhyu Si-min asserted on his YouTube news channel, Alileo, that KBS passed on parts of the interview to the prosecution without the consent of the witness.
Rhyu was quoting Kim Kyung-rok, who has managed the assets of Cho's wife, professor Chung Kyung-shim, for the last five years. Prosecutors accused Kim of "destroying" evidence by removing hard drives from Chung's computers in her office at Dongyang University, though he later turned them over. Kim was questioned by the prosecution Sept. 10, after being interviewed earlier the same day by KBS. He managed to see messaging posts on a prosecutor's computer screen that mentioned parts of the interview.
"I then realized how closely the media worked with the prosecution, especially reporters registered for access to the prosecutor's office. They make ends meet through mutual assistance," Kim said in a second interview recorded for and aired on Alileo, Tuesday.
Rhyu said he was appalled by the leak.
"Yes some give-and-take relationships are inevitable but there are moral limits to what you can and can't share," Rhyu said during a follow-up Alileo broadcast on YouTube, Wednesday.
KBS flatly denied Rhyu's accusation that it leaked the interview, threatening legal action. It did, however, say it cross-checked some of Kim's comments with the prosecutor's office, and had set up an investigative committee to review its reporters' actions.
Rhyu also claimed KBS failed to report Kim's version of the events leading to Chung's investment in Kolink PE, a private equity management firm under scrutiny for illicit dealings.
In Kim's interview with KBS ― reconstructed in a second interview he gave to Rhyu last week ― he told a different story to the one painted by unnamed prosecution sources in news reports. According to the account given by Kim, Chung was more likely an investor targeted for financial fraud rather than an accomplice to dubious dealings by her relative and other parties running the firm.
Kim's overall account of the events was not given in KBS news reports Sept. 11, a day after the interview. Some of what he said, however, was taken out of context to support two "exclusive" reports. One suggesting that the relative "may have been running the firm" for himself rather than for a bigger actor; and the other that Chung "may have been" more directly involved in the PEF as she once asked Kim to review the investment value of a battery company her relative later invested in through another fund.
Meanwhile, the text of the full interview for Alileo's interview with Kim was also leaked ― likely by Kim's lawyer who was trying to strike a deal with prosecutors. TV Chosun, a right-leaning broadcaster got hold of the text and reported Kim admitted to "destroying evidence" to Rhyu, but that this was edited out in the Alileo report. Rhyu, however, called out TV Chosun saying it took Kim's words out of context again. Rhyu said Kim was talking about how the prosecution pressured him to say that his removal of the hard disks at Chung's request to "look for their own evidence to use in her defense could count as destroying evidence in strictly legal terms.
