The state intelligence agency on Monday disclosed the transcript of a 2007 inter-Korean summit amid intensified political bickering over former President Roh Moo-hyun’s remarks over the Northern Limit Line, a de facto sea border.

During his summit with late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Roh said the NLL should be shifted and encompassed by a “map of peace and economy,” according to the transcript released by the National Intelligence Service.

The script also showed that Roh sharply criticized the U.S financial sanctions against North Korea in 2005. He also told the North Korean leader that Seoul scrapped a Seoul-Washington plan to deal with contingencies in the North.

The ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic Party clashed after the agency delivered the full records to the members of the information committee.

The DP refused to receive the NIS’ documents, condemning the NIS for breaking the law by unveiling classified data. The party said it would file a lawsuit against the NIS.

“There can only be two reasons the NIS did this. First, it could be that the NIS was acting under orders from somebody. In that case, those behind it must be revealed,” said Rep. Shin Kyoung-min, chief of DP’s committee on the NIS’ election interference. He said the second possible reason is that the NIS was acting on its own accord, and in such a case the agency must be dismantled.

“If it was acting by itself, it has transcended the law. Just what is behind the NIS election interference that (the NIS) is going this far to prevent the parliamentary investigation? The parliamentary probe must begin immediately, and all truth must be brought to light.”

The Saenuri Party welcomed the disclosure. “We hope this will be an opportunity to put to rest wasteful controversy, and to tell the public the historical facts,” its spokesman Rep. Kim Tae-heum said.

The allegation over Roh’s concession to the North on the NLL was first raised in the run up to last year’s presidential election. The controversy resurfaced last week when Rep. Suh Sang-kee of the ruling party viewed excerpts from the records and claimed that the allegations have been proven true.

The more than 100-page transcript covers highly sensitive issues regarding inter-Korean ties discussed during the summit in Pyongyang.

“I share the perception you have, Chairman (Kim). The NLL should change,” read the eight-page excerpt the National Intelligence Service disclosed to ruling Saenuri Party lawmakers of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee.

“But it is quite a loud and sensitive subject (in South Korea) with those who don’t know the content very well in realistic terms. What I suggest is to draw a map of peace and economy that encompasses the security and military maps.”

Roh also was cited as saying, “(Let’s) hammer the wedge (into this agreement) so that the next president will not step away from it,” adding he would serve as a “spokesperson” for the North when meeting foreign leaders.

With regard to Operational Plan 5029, a Seoul-Washington plan to deal with contingencies in the North, Roh said, “We scrapped the OPLAN 5029 after the U.S. side crafted it.”

Up until the latest revelation, the plan had been known to the media as a conceptual plan ― a reason why conservatives here have called on the allies to draw up an operational plan. Seoul and Washington officials had refused to confirm whether the plan was ever developed into an operational plan for fear of provoking Pyongyang.

The plan is said to outline concrete courses of military action concerning troop mobilization, arrangement of military installations and other activities in the event of contingencies in the North such as internal unrest, a regime collapse or mass defection by North Koreans.

The transcript also showed that Roh criticized the so-called BDA sanctions the U.S. slapped on the North in 2005. Washington sanctioned the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia, which managed some $25 million for Pyongyang, for purportedly helping the North launder illegally earned money.

North Korea has long challenged the NLL, seeking to make the seas south of the line a disputed region. The North contends the border line should be redrawn further south on the grounds that the demarcation was made unilaterally by Mark Wayne Clark, then head of the U.S.-led U.N. Command, at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Until 1973, Pyongyang remained relatively silent over it. But it violated the NLL 43 times between October and November in 1973 and has since continuously sought to nullify it, claiming sovereignty over the waters near the South’s frontline islands.

Seoul claims that the NLL divides the two Koreas’ territorial waters as it has served as a de facto border for decades. It says that under a 1991 inter-Korean pact, the North agreed that the border was the line separating the de facto jurisdictional areas, which each side has controlled thus far.

The North, however, argues that the two sides have yet to reach any final agreement over the maritime demarcation line.



By Choi He-suk and Song Sang-ho
(cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)(sshluck@heraldcorp.com)