On the 1st, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy released the original six-page document on the construction of a nuclear power plant in North Korea. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said, “This is the data reviewed at the idea level in case the economic cooperation between the two Koreas becomes active, and it was concluded without any additional review or disclosure to the outside.” [뉴스1]
– Controversy continued even after the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy released the document’Plans to Promote Nuclear Power Plant Construction in North Korea’. On the 2nd, the government and the ruling party limited the meaning by saying, “It is only the data for internal review by the Ministry of Industry,” but the opposition party expressed a question, “If there is no one, why deleted it?” (Oh Se-hoon, former mayor of Seoul). Although it is an internal review data, the controversy over the’North Korean nuclear power plant’ is focusing on why it was deleted.
The specific situation in which the document was deleted by a public official of the Ministry of Industry is shown in the audit report,’Checking the feasibility of the decision to close the first Wolseong nuclear power plant early,’ announced by the Audit Office in October last year. According to the report, Moo Kim, secretary of the Ministry of Industry, deleted data related to Wolseong Unit 1 from the computer of the Sejong Government Building office from 11:24 pm to 1:16 am the next day on December 1, 2019.
Clerk Kim began to delete the data he thought was sensitive regarding the closure of Wolsong Unit 1. He opened the document, erased the existing content, wrote down other content, saved it, and deleted it. This is to prevent you from checking the existing contents even if the file is restored. There are also traces of deletion after changing the file name so that the contents cannot be inferred by the file name. This is the reason why the document file name containing the content that’it is a report to the Blue House, so it is necessary to stop operation immediately after the decision to close early’ is ‘4234.BAK’, which is a meaningless number.
![The Wolseong nuclear power plant deletion file list contains documents related to the assembly of civic groups that opposed the nuclear power plant policy. [일람표 캡처]](https://i0.wp.com/pds.joins.com/news/component/htmlphoto_mmdata/202102/02/e9940375-ce51-48df-a278-8c39eacc2de0.jpg?w=900&ssl=1)
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The Wolseong nuclear power plant deletion file list contains documents related to the assembly of civic groups that opposed the nuclear power plant policy. [일람표 캡처]
– However, there were too many documents to be deleted. According to Clerk Kim’s statement by the auditor, at first the file name and document contents were modified and then deleted, but after that, the file name was left as it was and only the contents were modified and deleted. At the end, “it took too long to delete, and the files that were deleted afterwards were just deleted as a folder without modifying the file name or file contents,” Secretary Kim told the Audit Office.
The files related to the construction of North Korean nuclear power plants appear to have been deleted from the folder. If you look at the list of deleted files attached to the prosecution complaint, 17 files related to North Korean nuclear power plants, such as ‘180515_Promotion of nuclear power plant construction in North Korea_v1.2.hwp’, were deleted at 1:16:30 am on December 2nd. done. The last of the 530 deleted files were deleted, all of them in a folder named ’60 Pohjois’ (north in Finnish). This is why it is highly likely that the folder itself was deleted, not each file individually.
The passport also paid attention to this part. Chey Jae-sung, chief executive officer of the Blue House, appeared on MBC radio on the 2nd and insisted, “(Secretary Kim) seems to have deleted the entire folder,” and “this is not a problem.” Chief Choi also said, “I think it was lost in the process of deleting the entire folder (for files related to North Korean nuclear power plants).” It is presumed that the files related to the North Korean nuclear power plant were not intentionally deleted, but were only deleted in the process of deleting the folder.
![Jeong Moo-seok (left) and Chief Policy Officer Kim Sang-jo, Choi Jae-sung, are talking at a video cabinet meeting held at the Blue House on the morning of the 2nd. [청와대사진기자단]](https://i0.wp.com/pds.joins.com/news/component/htmlphoto_mmdata/202102/02/03be64ea-a8d1-4efe-a4c0-9c818afc5f93.jpg?w=900&ssl=1)
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Jeong Moo-seok (left) and Chief Policy Officer Kim Sang-jo, Choi Jae-sung, are talking at a video cabinet meeting held at the Blue House on the morning of the 2nd. [청와대사진기자단]
– However, when analyzing the file deletion process, it is highly likely that the assumption that “(the North Korean nuclear power plant file) was stolen” was wrong. In order to become “stuck”, the upper folder of the ’60 Pohjois’ folder must be deleted, and the file in ’60 Pohjois’ must also be accidentally deleted. The one deleted at 1:16:30 is the file in the ’60 Pohjois’ folder There is only one. It means that there is a high possibility that Clerk Kim deleted the folder after checking the name of the folder’Pohjois’, which means’North’. In particular, even if you look at the deletion time, there is a time difference of 24 seconds between the deletion time of the’Shingori.hwp’ deleted immediately before and the deletion time of the file in the ’60 Pohjois’ folder.
Reporter Yoon Seongmin [email protected]
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