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| ▲ This photo, provided by the Ministry of Unification on July 12, 2022, shows a North Korean fisherman, who was captured near the eastern inter-Korean sea border, resisting as he is handed over to North Korean authorities in the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom in November 2019. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
rival parties-NK fishermen
PPP to push for parliamentary investigation, special probe on 2019 repatriation of N.K. fishermen
SEOUL, July 14 (Yonhap) -- The ruling People Power Party (PPP) said Thursday it will consider launching a parliamentary investigation or an independent counsel probe into the previous administration's repatriation of two North Korean fishermen in 2019.
"We will reveal the truth of the case where people's lives were used for political power," Rep. Kweon Seong-dong, the PPP's acting chief, said during a party meeting.
The repatriation is one of the suspicious cases involving the former administration that President Yoon Suk-yeol's government is revisiting, along with the North's killing of a South Korean fisheries official near the western sea border in 2020.
In 2019, the North Koreans confessed to killing 16 fellow crew members and expressed a desire to defect to South Korea. But the then Moon Jae-in government determined their intentions as insincere and sent them back to the North where they could face harsh punishment.
Kweon said the Moon government ignored the law and decided on the repatriation for political reasons, noting the North Koreans showed a desire to defect when they were captured and are citizens of South Korea under the Constitution.
"Human rights are a universal value of humankind, but to the administration of former President Moon Jae-in and the main opposition Democratic Party, human rights are a political tool," Kweon said.
The remark came after the presidential office said the repatriation could be a "crime against humanity" and vowed to reveal the truth behind the case.
But the main opposition DP slammed the ruling bloc for using the issue for political gain.
"This case clearly involves brutal criminals who murdered 16 fishermen, and they have been sent back to the North in terms of extradition, as it was difficult to see they had a pure intention to defect," DP's interim leader Woo Sang-ho said in a radio interview with YTN.
"If this is such an anti-humanitarian crime and a crime against humanity, why did they keep silent when the North Koreans were repatriated?" Woo asked.
The PPP leader, however, said the then government should have verified the credibility of North Korea's claim the fishermen were murderers.
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