“I couldn’t trust the mainstream media,” Roh told me. “I had to go
online, to my blog.”
Roh concluded that seven people, including some prosecutors, were the
targets of Samsung’s alleged payments or attempted payments. He held a
parliamentary hearing. After lawmakers proposed a summons for Chairman
Lee, he flew to Texas’s Anderson Cancer Center for treatment—a move
widely criticized as a ruse. (Medical excuses were common among chaebol
leaders under scrutiny or facing trial.)
National Assemblyman Roh read the transcript before the parliament in
August 2005. Then he turned to a vice justice minister who was present.
“You’re on the list,” Roh asked. “Did you take the money?”
“No,” responded the vice minister.
The vice minister resigned a few days later, although he never was
found guilty of wrongdoing. Chairman Lee’s brother-in-law, Hong, the
ambassador to the United States and someone with political ambitions, also
resigned.
Prosecutors opened an investigation into...well...the prosecutors;
ultimately they declined to press charges against themselves or against
Samsung, citing the statute of limitations, which had expired.
Roh, however, continued his campaign against Samsung. So loud and
boisterous was his activism that two people he was indebted to approached
him—at the request of Samsung, he believed—and asked him to stop
attacking the company.
A year had gone by with no state investigation into Samsung, when Roh
got a call from the prosecutor’s office.
“Roh Hoe-chan,” said the bureaucrat on the other end of the line, “we’re
going to have to charge you.”
Because Roh had published the transcripts online, a team of prosecutors
had concluded that the politician, not Samsung, was guilty of a crime: The
tapes were made from illegal wiretaps conducted by the spy agency;
releasing them was in violation of the country’s anti-wiretapping law.
Samsung, in other words, was the real victim.
Suddenly the wheels of government turned against Roh. Prosecutors
also charged him with defaming the prosecutors—a verdict that can carry a
prison sentence in addition to a hefty fine. The broadcaster who first
revealed the existence of the X-file transcript, Lee Sang-ho, stood accused