Prosecutors in the Seoul Central District have received a criminal complaint against Kim Yo Jong. (File)
Seoul:
Prosecutors in Seoul have opened an unprecedented investigation into the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un following Pyongyang’s explosion of a liaison office last month, officials said on Thursday.
The move is likely to anger the nuclear-armed North, which has repeatedly condemned South Korea in recent months, including personally insulting President Moon Jae-in.
Prosecutors in the Seoul Central District have received a criminal complaint against Kim Yo Jong from a Seoul-based lawyer and have opened an investigation, a spokeswoman for AFP said.
Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on his side of the border last month, just days after Kim Yo Jong – one of his brother’s closest advisers – said the property “useless” would soon be “completely collapsed” view.
Before the demolition, he had issued a series of South Korean vitriolic convictions for anti-North leaflets that defectors sent across the heavily militarized border – usually tied to balloons or floated in bottles.
He further increased pressure by threatening to take military action against Seoul, but later said that he had suspended these plans due to a sudden drop in tensions.
In his complaint, lawyer Lee Kyung-jae claimed that the now demolished liaison office was South Korean property because it had been renovated with funds from the South Korean government, although it was located in the North.
Kim “used explosives to destroy” the “quasi-diplomatic southern mission building that served the public interest,” he said in the complaint.
Lee also filed a complaint against Pak Jong Chon, chief of staff of the North Korean army.
Under South Korean penal code, he said, damaging property or disturbing the peace with explosives is punishable by death or imprisonment for at least seven years .
Capital punishment remains in the statutes of South Korea, although it has not executed anyone since 1997.
In practice, it would be next to impossible for Seoul officials to punish Kim Yo Jong or Pak, but Lee told the Yonhap South news agency that he wanted to “inform the North Korean people of the hypocrisy of his chief”.
The announcement came a week after a Seoul court ordered the chief of Pyongyang to compensate prisoners of war who have spent decades in North Korea, which could set a far-reaching legal precedent on the peninsula. divided.
Inter-Korean relations were strained after the collapse of a summit in Hanoi between Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump early last year on what the armed North would be willing to give up in exchange for relaxation of sanctions.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
