Mick Hartley

Some developments in the strange story of the South Korean fisheries inspector who supposedly jumped overboard in a bid to defect to the North. He was questioned by the North Koreans for several hours as he trod water before they shot him and burned his body. Kim Jong-un offered an unprecedented apology for this "disgraceful affair" – though it seems that the apology was little more than a sop for South Korea, and the perpetrators, far from being punished, are being commended for their actions.

Yesterday South Korea's Chosun Ilbo reported that the man's son had written an angry letter to President Moon, denying that his father had wanted to defect:

"What was the government doing while my father was brutally killed?" he asked in the handwritten letter. He also demanded to know whether claims from compromised military officers that his father wanted to defect to North Korea make sense.

Lee Rae-jin, the victim's brother, shared the letter with the Chosun Ilbo on Monday. It is dated Oct. 6 because he apparently wanted to release it that day.

The victim's son identifies himself as "the son of the official who was killed and victimized by North Korean soldiers" and "a second-year high school student." He added he also has a sister who is eight years old….

His father, who worked on a fisheries patrol boat, "called us on the phone as usual, and even made a video call to my sister saying that he would come home in a few days."

"When he went missing suddenly, stories that have not been proven appear as hot topics in the media every day," he wrote. "How can someone drag the breadwinner of a family through the mud?"

He furiously denied that his father would have wanted to defect to the oppressive North, saying he "was proud of his job and even came to school and explained it to students." He added his father "never learned to swim professionally." "I want to ask if it really makes sense for a skinny man who weighs only 68 kg at a height of 180 cm to swim deliberately against the tide."…

According the South Korean military's own account, it looked on for hours while the man was being questioned in the water before the North Koreans summarily shot him, doused the body in fuel and incinerated it. It did not attempt to communicate with the North Koreans at any point and explained its inaction by the fact that the man was in North Korean waters.

In closing, the victim's son implored Moon, "Please rehabilitate my dishonored father so that my mother, younger sister and I can have normal lives."

Moon and his government sat on the news of the killing for two days until a pre-recorded speech in which the president proposed a peace treaty with North Korea had safely been beamed out to a virtual session of the UN General Assembly.

Both the president and the military have been accused of cowardice and dereliction of duty. In their defense they have since perpetuated the claim that the official had chosen this route to defect.

Today we hear that the man's family are demanding a UN investigation:

Government apologists have claimed that the man wanted to defect to North Korea, but the official's family denies this.

His elder brother Lee Rae-jin on Tuesday visited the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Seoul and requested an independent probe of the killing.

The request is poignant since Moon hushed up the killing for two days until after he had delivered a speech calling for peace with North Korea to a virtual session of the UN General Assembly.

At a press conference, Lee raised the possibility of joining hands with the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who was imprisoned in North Korea in 2016 on a charge of subversion and died after he was released in a coma in 2017. He vowed to "tell the world about the brutality of North Korea."  […]

The official, who worked as a fisheries inspector, went missing from a patrol boat on Sept. 21 and was spotted by a North Korean Navy ship the following morning. Accounts differ what happened next. The South Korean military says the man's captors kept him in the water for six hours while they interrogated him, before "an order from above" came to kill him. They then fired a dozen rounds into him before setting him ablaze.

But North Korean leader Kim Jon-un, in a letter of apology to Moon, claimed the official was killed immediately and only his life vest was set on fire while the body had disappeared.

The military, which looked on while the official was being first kept in the freezing water and then murdered, later claimed that the man must have wanted to defect because he left his shoes behind on board and wore a life vest. But life vests are mandatory on patrol boats, and no evidence of the shoe story has been presented so far.

Neighbors and family of the official say it would have been madness to choose that route to defect to North Korea even if he had wanted to.

Murkier and murkier.