Judul : Administration's absurd uproar over 'empty shell' tags
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Administration's absurd uproar over 'empty shell' tags
Democratic Party lawmakers subjected a prosecutor in her late 20s to a barrage of questions during a hearing on the loss of hanbokwon (official currency bundle) tags held at the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee on the 5th. When the investigator, who claimed, “I don’t remember the incident,” the lawmakers pressed, “Who instructed you to destroy the tags?” and “Do you want to take the blame alone and get arrested?”
The Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office discovered a cash bundle of 165 million Korean won (3,300 50,000-won bills) during a raid on the home of Jeon Sung-bae, a member of the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee, last December. Of this amount, 50 million won was in hanbokwon bundles, which the Bank of Korea certifies for quantity and condition. The cash consisted of ten 5 million won bundles, each containing 100 50,000-won bills tied together with tags. It was later discovered that ten of these tags had gone missing. According to the prosecutors’ office, the investigator in charge of the seized items untied the bundles to count the bills but failed to preserve the tags. The Presidential Office and the Democratic Party suspect that the prosecution deliberately discarded the tags to conceal that the money had flowed from former President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife. President Lee Jae-myung ordered a permanent special counsel team to investigate the loss of the tags.
As the Ministry of Justice, the Democratic Party, and the Presidential Office took turns condemning and expressing outrage over the loss of the tags, the public might have assumed, “The hanbokwon tags must contain important information.” However, officials at the Bank of Korea, who are responsible for hanbokwon bundles, are perplexed. They find it bewildering that tags, which merely signify “a bundle of 100 bills,” have become a national issue.
Hanbokwon bundles are cash bundles supplied to the market by the Bank of Korea, which guarantees their condition and quantity. Newly printed bills are classified as “manufactured notes,” while those recollected from circulation and resupplied are labeled “used notes.” Ten bundles of 100 50,000-won bills each are wrapped in plastic and stored in a warehouse before being delivered to banks upon request. Since the exact quantity cannot be verified each time, a Bank of Korea inspector pre-writes their name and date on the tag, stating, “This is a 5 million won bundle. I will take responsibility if there is an error.” Hanbokwon bundles are treated as identical and are not distinguished. Records are kept of which bank received how much and when, but there is no tracking of which specific bundle was delivered. This applies to both manufactured and used notes.
A lawyer formerly from the prosecution’s special investigations unit said, “I’ve never heard of tracking funds through hanbokwon bundles.” “To trace the flow of hanbokwon bundles, commercial banks would need to store barcode records every time they receive money from the Bank of Korea and dispense it to customers,” the lawyer explained. “That would mean banks are monitoring customers’ financial flows—would any bank do that?”
He added, “The tags used by commercial banks to bundle cash could aid investigations.” If a person who gave a bribe testifies, “I withdrew cash from a specific bank on a certain date and delivered it,” and tags with the same date and bank employee’s name are found at the recipient’s home, those tags would have evidentiary value.
There is a more definitive reason why the administration’s claim that “the tags were destroyed to hide the funds’ origin” does not hold. While the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office investigator lost the tags bundling the 100 50,000-won bills, they did photograph and preserve the sticker on the plastic bag that contained the ten 5 million won bundles. The sticker lists information such as “50,000-won bills, used notes, 50 million won, Issuance Department (responsible division), handler’s name, supervisor’s name, equipment number, and May 13, 2022 (packaging date).” According to the Bank of Korea, the missing tags only print the responsible division, handler’s name, equipment number, and date—information that is also included on the sticker. Although the sticker contains additional details not present on the tags, all the information from the tags is duplicated on the sticker. As long as the sticker remains, no information is lost due to the missing tags. If the prosecution had intended to conceal the hanbokwon’s origin, they would have also discarded the sticker.
The investigator was 29 years old with nine months of experience at the time of processing the seized items. They could be criticized for failing to preserve the evidence in its original condition. However, their actions do not constitute a crime severe enough to warrant threats like, “Do you want to go to prison?”
It would have taken only a few phone calls to realize that the missing hanbokwon tags are mere empty shells incapable of revealing fund flows. If the Democratic Party had called the Bank of Korea’s responsible officer to testify at the hearing, the truth could have been confirmed within ten minutes. It seems the Democratic Party did not want this truth to be revealed. A prosecutor from the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office had to stop mid-sentence after being rebuked for “leaking the secret” that “the missing tags contain less information than the photographed sticker.” What the Democratic Party wanted was not the truth but a stage to perform a ritual denouncing the prosecution as “an evil and pathetic organization that should be dismantled.”
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