Former National Intelligence Service(NIS) Director Park Jie-won has appeared before prosecutors for questioning over an alleged cover-up in the 2020 fatal shooting of a South Korean fisheries official by North Korean soldiers.

Appearing at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office at around 9:50 a.m. Wednesday, Park told reporters that he did not receive any orders from former President Moon Jae-in or former National Security Advisor Suh Hoon to delete intelligence on the death of the fisheries official, Lee Dae-jun.

He also denied allegations that he gave orders to NIS employees to erase information on the incident.

In July, the NIS filed a complaint with the Supreme Prosecutors' Office against Park for "deleting intelligence-related reports without authorization" regarding Lee’s 2020 death.

An inspection by the Board of Audit and Inspection found that the NIS deleted 46 intelligence reports following a ministers’ meeting on Lee’s case that was held the day after he was killed.

The prosecution suspects that Park, who served as NIS chief from July 2020 to May 2022, instructed the agency to delete the reports on Suh’s order after attending that ministerial meeting.

On September 22, 2020, Lee was on duty near the inter-Korean maritime boundary in the West Sea when he was fatally shot by North Korean soldiers, who proceeded to burn his body.
 
The defense ministry and the Coast Guard under the then-Moon Jae-in administration announced within days that Lee was killed while attempting to defect to the North, an assertion that was retracted in June of this year after President Yoon Suk Yeol’s inauguration in May.

The prosecution launched an investigation in July into allegations that senior-level officials of the Moon administration orchestrated the cross-agency response as well as the intelligence scrubbing.