“I’m already doing the prosecutors. And the K1s,” he said, referring to
alumni of the influential Kyunggi High School, an academy for the Korean
elite on the level of Phillips Exeter Academy.
“What about the others?”
“I think there will be some overlap there.”
“I’d also like to get to Kim _____.” (The full name of the individual was
redacted from a transcript of the recordings that was later broadcast on
national television.)
“We will send something over if you set up a budget for us.”
Neither participant knew he was being recorded, but it sounded like the
two men, speaking that day in September 1997, were plotting to bribe
prosecutors and other people of influence.
Roh hired audio experts to analyze the voices.
“Our conclusions were groundbreaking,” he said after a shot of soju and
a slice of barbecued pork. “The first speaker was probably Hong Seok-
hyun, the South Korean ambassador to the U.S.”—who happened to be the
Samsung chairman’s brother-in-law and was publisher of the widely read
JoongAng newspaper, owned by Samsung until 1999.
“Hong Seok-hyun was a big figure,” Roh told me. “There was talk that
he wanted to be the next UN secretary general, that he had political
ambitions.”
“The other man,” he said, “was Vice Chairman Lee Hak-soo,” the
chairman’s confidant, whom Kim Yong-chul told me was a key figure in
the company.
And why?
“The purpose of these gifts, we believed, was to get the government’s
goodwill. Chairman Lee had to get his son into the company leadership.” It
was yet another scandal arising from an attempt to hand over control of the
company in Samsung’s troubled generational succession.
It was also an indictment of the company’s tentacle-like reach, showing
how deep its connections went in the South Korean government. Roh knew
the grave consequences of publishing this tape and naming judges,
prosecutors, politicians. And who exactly, he wondered, were the recipients
of the holiday “gifts”? And there were additional “X-Files” still kept
confidential by the spy agency but waiting to be released. This was just one
of hundreds of recordings, he said.