A businessman who put a video clip lampooning President Lee Myung-bak in his blog was not the only civilian placed under illegal surveillance. Instead, President Lee Myung-bak’s administration is found to have conducted surveillance on numerous civilians with no authorization from the court.

The prime minister’s office has a section authorized to monitor high-level officials ― either in government departments or firms and organizations funded or invested in by the government ― if they are suspected of breaching a code of conduct. But it is not authorized to carry out surveillance on civilians.

When the section was found to have carried out surveillance on the businessman for months since September 2008, the Lee administration claimed he was the only civilian targeted for surveillance. But documents obtained by a labor union at the Korea Broadcasting System show that those put under surveillance included a Protestant priest, an obstetrician, a monthly magazine reporter, union leaders and many other civilians.

Written on some of the documents is “order from BH” ― an indication that surveillance was often conducted under order from the presidential office, with “BH” being the initials of the Blue House. The presidential office denies that it ordered any illegal surveillance or received reports from it.

Instead, the presidential office claims that more than 80 percent of the 2,600 cases of surveillance contained in the documents were carried out by the previous administration. But the claim is secondary, if not misplaced, given that at issue now is whether or not the presidential office was involved in illegal surveillance on civilians.

Another issue of no less concern is whether or not the presidential office exercised undue influence on the prosecutors’ office when it was conducting an investigation into the illegal surveillance case.

The prosecutors’ office was aware that the businessman with a video clip in his blog was not the only civilian target of surveillance and that many others were under surveillance, given that the documents the KBS labor union obtained are copies of some of the indictment papers the prosecutors’ office submitted to the court when they indicted those accused of illegal surveillance in August last year and those accused of destroying evidence a month later. But the office limited its investigation to the case involving the businessman.

That is the very reason why an independent counsel, not the prosecutors’ office, should reopen the case, as demanded by political parties.