Two Opposition Parties Voted for `Testimony of Ahn Jeong-Nam`

The Financial and Economic Committee (FEC) of the Congress adopted former Commissioner of National Tax Service (NTS) and the current Minister of Construction and Transportation (MCT) Ahn Jeong-Nam as a general witness for the administrative inspection on the Seoul District Tax Service.

And the committee took up as institutional witnesses 5 heads of tax investigation teams, who led the tax investigation on the Donga Ilbo Chosun Ilbo, Kookmin Ilbo, Korea Daily Newspaper, and MBC.

The committee voted on the adoption of witness in the general meeting during the administrative inspection, and decided to put to trial 6 witnesses, postponing the inspection on the Seoul District Tax Service scheduled on 13th to 19th.

Among 21 members of the committee, 10 members of the Grand National Party (GNP) and 1 member of the United Liberal Democrats (ULD) voted in favor of the witness adoption. But all representatives of the New Millennium Democratic Party (NMDP) walked off the committee before the vote, maintaining that ``it is illegal to adopt the witnesses by altering the inspection date without the agreement in the Congress plenary session.``

However, the FEC closed the issue that the GNP charged Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Economy Jin Nyum of `yelling affair`, requesting Jin to apologize for the affair.

In the administrative inspection on the Government Information Agency, the representatives of the Committee for Culture and Tourism limped for two days, pitting against each other on the witness adoption of Senior Secretary to the President for Policy & Planning Park Ji-Won and the Commissioner of National Tax Service Sohn Young-Rae (former head of Seoul District Tax Service) until late afternoon.

The NMDP and the GNP agreed to adopt as witnesses Senior Secretary Park, Commissioner Sohn and Chairman of the Fair Trade Commission Lee Nam-Ki and to stand three newspaper owners in the administrative inspection, through contacts between floor leaders and staffs, but failed to reach an agreement on the witness adoption of former Direct General of the National Intelligence Service Lee Jong-Chan.

In the administrative inspection on the Ministry of Information and Communication by the Committee for Science, Technology, Information and Communication, Rep. Yoon Young-Tak (GNP) asserted that ``for National Intelligence Service, the cases of wiretapping without the court`s warranty increased by 102 percent from last year, so that Korea already became the eavesdropping republic.``

Rep. Kim Hyo-Seok (NMDP) said, ``Recently, the new detection technology, TEMPEST has been imported and been used for the wiretapping of communication contents. Thus, the government should set up the security device against the illegal wiretapping by revising the law for protection of the communication privacy as soon as possible.``

Lee Weon-Jae wjlee@donga.com