Democratic Party chairman Rep. Kim Han-gil announced Wednesday that he would personally take charge of the party’s efforts to reform the National Intelligence Service and to shed light on its part in last year’s presidential election.

Saying that his party had run out of patience and that the public was angered by the NIS’ actions, he vowed the DP would no longer stand by while the ruling Saenuri Party held back the parliamentary investigation into the case.

The ruling party and the DP have been wrangling over witnesses for the parliamentary investigation. They have been unable to select witnesses with only 15 days left until its scheduled end.

“I will personally head the committee for reviving democracy and reforming the NIS. I will personally lead the fight and negotiations inside and outside the parliament,” Kim said at a press conference on Wednesday.

He also said that the committee would set up its headquarters in Seoul Plaza on Thursday, where the party will hold a general meeting of lawmakers.

“The DP has the conviction that thousands, tens of thousands of people seeking the truth will be with us.”

Earlier in the day, the DP’s floor leader said that his party would not cooperate in an ongoing prosecution investigation into the disappearance of a 2007 inter-Korean summit transcript due to questions about the prosecution’s political neutrality.

The remarks by Rep. Jun Byung-hun come one day after the DP submitted a bill calling for an independent probe into both the transcript’s disappearance and allegations that the state spy agency leaked its own copy of the classified document to the ruling Saenuri Party ahead of last December’s presidential election.

The transcript would have been the key to verifying the ruling party’s claims that late South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun from the opposition bloc undermined the country’s sovereignty during his summit with North Korea’s then-leader Kim Jong-il by offering to surrender the western maritime border.

However, the rival parties discovered to their surprise last week that the transcript was not at the National Archives of Korea.

The opposition party called for an independent investigation into its disappearance, but the ruling party ignored the calls and pressed charges against former Roh government officials it believes are responsible for the loss of the transcript.

“We can’t expect a fair investigation from a prosecution whose neutrality is under question,” Jun said at an emergency general meeting of DP lawmakers. “Not one person will cooperate in the prosecution’s investigation until we are assured of a fair and neutral independent probe.”

By Choi He-suk and news reports
(cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)