Lee Seok Ki, a lawmaker with the far left Unified Progressive Party (UPP), and a number of other party officials are accused of “conspiracy to stage a rebellion,” in effect treason, and violating the National Security Law. Most importantly, Lee is said to have led the creation of an underground RO, or Revolutionary Organization.
According to the National Intelligence Service (NIS), Lee headed the RO in question, which was formed in approximately 2004. Lee and a large number of the leading lights in the group were apparently from the element of the UPP that has its origins in the East Gyeonggi Coalition. The NIS says Lee and others were recorded at a meeting in May this year making plans to secure firearms and bring down parts of the national infrastructure in the event of war with North Korea.
The NIS says it has an audio recording of Lee and 130 members secretly meeting last May at a building in Hapjeong-dong in western Seoul. Among things allegedly discussed were material and technical preparations for the possible outbreak of war.
According to an official with the investigating team, the meeting saw discussion of attacks on a Korea Telecom-owned facility in Hyewha, a region of central Seoul, the Internet Data Center in Bundang, an affluent commuter city south of Seoul, as well as mainline rail routes from Seoul to Busan and Gwangju.
In addition, the NIS says it suspects that East Gyeonggi Coalition members may have secretly visited North Korea, which, controversially, remains a crime under South Korean law.
The UPP has come out strongly against the latest developments. According to UPP head Lee Jung Hee, the events represent nothing less than a “communist witch hunt.”
“Just as the true nature of the rigged presidential election is coming out and the Blue House is in crisis and with the NIS on the verge of being dismantled, the NIS starts a Yushin-era communist witch hunt for the 21st century,” Lee proclaimed to reporters at a hastily arranged press conference.
