“I Was Told Not To Say Anything”

“I was told not to say anything,” said Kim Gyeong-jun, the key figure in the BBK stock price manipulation scandal, to reporters. He was returning to the Seoul Detention Center after prosecutors finished questioning him at around 1 a.m. on Wednesday. Although Kim tried to dodge the media, he encountered reporters waiting in the underground parking lot.

It was his first remark since he was prosecuted on November 18. Although reporters have asked him questions several times since then, he has maintained his silence.

Kim, wearing a dark shirt and brown jacket, was bound by a rope and surrounded by three investigators. When Kim was asked, just before getting into a sedan, “Do you have anything to say,” he told reporters that he had been asked not to speak.

All of his words spoken since his extradition on November 16 have became the talk of the town, such as “Can I say one thing?” “I did not come here at this time on purpose. I came here because my civil lawsuit is now over,” and “I have brought something.”

However, Kim maintained a stony silence after his custody was handed over to the prosecution and the Seoul Detention Center with the court’s issuance of an arrest warrant.

“The investigation team, aiming to prevent leakage of information, seemed to have strongly pressured him to remain silent after realizing that his every remark and gesture, even his raising a thumb, is making the headlines,” a prosecution official said.

dnsp@donga.com