Ex-intel agency No. 2 changes testimony on where he wrote 'politician arrest list’

Hong Jang-won, the former National Intelligence Service deputy director, on Thursday changed his prior testimony regarding the controversial "politician arrest list" he says he wrote out on Dec. 3, 2024, at the 10th hearing in the impeachment case of President Yoon Suk Yeol.

Hong, who appeared for a second examination after Yoon’s legal team raised concerns about the credibility of his testimony given on Feb. 4 and requested that he be summoned again, admitted to a “slight error” in his memory.

“During my testimony at the prosecution investigation, I thought (where I wrote down the note) was at an open space in front of (NIS Director Cho Tae-yong’s) official residence,” Hong said.

“But when I reviewed my memory, I realized that the moment when I was given a list of politicians to be arrested during a phone call was at 10:58 p.m., and I wrote down the list at 11:06 p.m. inside my office,” he added.

Previously, in the fifth hearing held on Feb. 4, Hong testified that Yoon had instructed him to arrest politicians. He also provided detailed testimony about the process of receiving the list in a phone call with the then-chief of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, Yeo In-hyung.

Hong’s testimony was considered key evidence suggesting that Yoon had issued an unlawful order to arrest politicians. However, National Intelligence Service Director Cho Tae-yong raised strong doubts about the credibility of the “political arrest note” during his appearance as a witness on Feb. 13.

“Hong was inside his office at 11:06 p.m. on Dec. 3, the time he claimed to be in front of my official residence. ... I’ve checked this on surveillance camera footage,” Cho told the court last week.

Hong previously testified that before he spoke to Yeo late in the night of Dec. 3, Yoon had called him directly at 10:53 p.m., immediately after his declaration of martial law. He testified that Yoon instructed him to “take this opportunity to round them all up. Get rid of them all.”

Hong continued his testimony to say that Yeo called him soon after with a list of politicians, although Yeo previously testified that he could not clearly recall such a conversation when he appeared at the court as a witness on Feb. 4.

After hearing the list of politicians, "I decided to write it in a note due to my curiosity at that time, but then after the martial law was lifted, I wondered why such people had to be arrested that night. I thought I should be interested in remembering the names on the list,” Hong said in his testimony as to why he had asked an aide to recall the names the next day and made more notes.

Yoon rebutted Hong’s testimony.

“The issue with the National Intelligence Service deputy director’s note-taking is that it tries to connect my conversation with him as a direct order for arrest, claiming it to be part of a plot for insurrection,” Yoon said, adding that is an action that is “outside of common sense.”

“There is no one but me inside the country to know better than an organization like the NIS, except those who work there. It doesn’t make sense that I called Hong to give such an order while there is also an NIS director,” the suspended president added.