The presidential office Cheong Wa Dae has discovered additional documents from the former administration that potentially incriminate the ousted former President Park Geun-hye and her top aides, a Cheong Wa Dae official said Monday.
The additional documents were found in a file cabinet located in the office of the presidential secretary for political affairs, according to Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Park Soo-hyun.
Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Park Soo-hyun (Yonhap)
The announcement came three days after the presidential office said it found over 300 documents from an office previously occupied by the presidential secretary for civil affairs under the former Park Geun-hye administration, some of which suggested the former leader may have sought to support what could have been an illegal inheritance of wealth by Lee Jae-yong, the de facto leader of Samsung Group.
The 1,361 new documents mostly contain the outcomes of weekly meetings of presidential secretaries chaired by the chief of staff between March 2015 and November 2016.
Some of the 254 documents that have been reviewed contained orders from the former chief of staff, according to Park.
"They have to do with Samsung and the blacklist of cultural figures," he said in a press briefing.
The documents may help incriminate former presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon, who is facing trial on suspicion of managing the so-called blacklist of cultural figures deemed critical of the former administration, an allegation currently denied by Kim.
The documents also contained Kim's orders for using the media in dealing with various issues, including the tragic sinking of the Sewol ferry and the controversial deal with Japan over the latter's sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II, Park said.
"They include unlawful orders related to the agreement over sexual slaves, the Sewol ferry, state-authored history textbooks and elections," he said.
The documents, once sorted, will likely be handed over to the special counsel and the prosecution, currently seeking to prosecute the former president and her aides on various charges including bribery and influence peddling. (Yonhap)
