공유하기

[REPORT] ‘Choi Soon-sil tablet’ Fabrication Issue: Swapping Tablet User by Doctoring Carrier Contracts

'Choi Soon-sil Tablet' was manipulated from its 'origin' ... It was Kim Han-soo's tablet from the beginning to the end

미디어워치 편집부 mediasilkhj@gmail.com 2024.04.24 20:42:36
크게보기

[Editor's note] This report was written in English in November 2023 to brief "Korea Watcher" analysts and journalists in the Anglo-American sphere on Yoon Suk-yeok and Han Dong-hoon's tablet manipulation investigation, a treasonous crime committed by South Korean prosecutors.



‘Choi Soon-sil tablet’ Fabrication Issue:
Swapping Tablet User by Doctoring Carrier Contracts


The “Choi Soon-sil Tablet” is not a computer but a mobile phone device, which, as revealed by JTBC and the prosecution, was activated on June 22, 2012, under the name of Kim Han-soo (CEO of Ma:rei Company in 2012 and former Blue House administrator in late 2016).

Kim Han-soo activated the tablet, and the original user and owner was Kim Han-soo. In other words, the tablet JTBC disclosed in late 2016 in a scoop report as evidence of former President Park Geun-hye's “manipulation of state affairs” was not owned by Choi Soon-sil, a civilian. Instead, Kim Han-soo, a member of the Blue House at the time, was the real owner. 

The JTBC, the prosecutors, and the special counsel have all officially claimed that the “Choi Soon-sil Tablet” belonged to Choi Seo-won (Choi Soon-sil before name change) based on their respective investigations. But the Tablet belonged to Kim Han-soo from the get-go. In essence, if we can prove that the special counsel falsely claimed that the tablet device was transferred from Kim Han-soo to Choi Seo-won (Choi Soon-sil), then scrutinizing the validity of the JTBC’s report and prosecutors’ investigative findings would not be necessary.

It's like saying that if a child was never born in the first place and his birth certificate is a fabrication, it's completely pointless to question the authenticity of the child's childhood portrait, whether he entered elementary school, his grades in college, or his criminal records.

A. How the ‘Kim Han-soo Tablet’ became the ‘Choi Soon-sil Tablet’ (Explanation by the Prosecutor and Special Counsel)

The prosecution and special prosecutors explain how the ‘Kim Hansoo Tablet’ became the ‘Choi Soon-sil Tablet’ in the past as follows.

On June 22, 2012, Kim Han-soo activated a tablet under his company (“Ma:rei Company”). Kim immediately gave the tablet to an acquaintance, Lee Choon-sang, who was an aide to then-presidential candidate Park Geun-hye. Lee died in a car accident on December 2, 2012. Kim had set the tablet's mobile bill payment method to automatic payment through his company's corporate card from when it was activated. His company paid for the tablet's mobile bill, so Lee claimed he was unaware of the tablet's whereabouts for about six months in the second half of 2012. In January 2013, Kim had a phone call with Choi Seo-won, who testified that he began working at the Blue House at Choi's suggestion. He also testified that it was at this time that he learned that the tablet he had activated in the second half of 2012 had been passed along from Lee Choon-sang to Choi Seo-won. And that it was at this time (around January 2013), that he changed the payer of the tablet's bill from his company to his name. He had decided to continue to pay the tablet's bill for Choi Seo-won personally, given his relationship with the late aide Lee Choon-sang. 

The above statements are verbatim from Kim's statements to the prosecution and special counsel and his testimony at the first trial of former President Park Geun-hye. In addition to these statements and testimonies, the prosecution and special counsel also presented the court with the tablet's mobile phone contract from Ma:rei Company and Kim's bill from February 2013 as evidence to support these statements and testimonies. Accordingly, the first trial court presiding over former President Park Geun-hye's case confirmed Kim's testimony as being “true.” 


B. The ‘Kim Han-soo Tablet’, which has never been the ‘Choi Soon-sil Tablet’

However, the origin story of the “Choi Soon-sil tablet” presented by the prosecution and special counsel is false from start to finish. The truth began to emerge in early 2020 through scrutinizing evidence from the tablet defamation appeals suit filed against (Seoul Central District Court 2018No4088) Byun Hee-jae, founder and owner of MediaWatch and its journalists. 

During the appellate criminal trial, Byun Hee-jae and MediaWatch reporters questioned Kim Han-soo's payment of telecommunications bills for Choi Soon-sil's tablet, so the trial court asked Hana Card (corporate card issuer of Ma:rei Company) and SK Telecom (a telecommunications company associated with the tablet) to investigate the facts. As a result, it was found that Ma:rei Company had never paid for the 'Choi Soon-sil Tablet' in the first place and that the card company did not have a record of setting up direct debit for corporate cards. 



The fact-finding also revealed that Choi Soon-sil's Tablet had been suspended for three months immediately after its activation due to nonpayment. It was also revealed that Kim Han-soo had used the tablet on November 27, 2012, and paid the overdue telecommunications bills with his personal credit card (Shinhan Card 4658-8761-XXXX-1006) and lifted the suspension. 


Kim Han-soo's alibi, whereby he claimed that a tablet activated in his company's name was passed to Choi Seo-won without his knowledge in the second half of 2012, was proved to be false.

C. Prosecutors and special counsel fabricated the ‘Kim Han-soo Tablet’ as the ‘Choi Soon-sil Tablet’

This did not happen because the prosecutors and special counsel made any mistakes in their investigation. It happened because the prosecutors and special counsel clearly and intentionally conducted a fabricated investigation to frame the ‘Kim Han-soo Tablet’ as the ‘Choi Soon-sil Tablet’. The evidence of the prosecution and special counsel's fabricated investigation is as follows.

First, the prosecution and special counsel used Kim Han-soo's “false alibi” in the trial involving former President Park Geun-hye (i.e., the “Choi Soon-sil Tablet” was activated by Kim Han-soo but passed to another person shortly after that, and the related communication charges were paid on the corporate card of Ma:rei Company from June 22, 2012 until around January 2013, Ltd.'s corporate card from June 22, 2012 to around January 2013. Kim Han-soo had yet to learn of the whereabouts of the ‘Choi Soon-sil tablet’ at the very time the tablet was finally handed over to Choi Seo-won), but omitted only the telecommunication bill payment records for 2012, the year Kim opened the tablet. Common sense dictates that telecommunication bill payment records should be submitted for the entire period since the tablet was activated, but it needs to include only the first year's payment records out of the whole period. The prosecution asked false questions about the bill payment to Kim during the trial based on these incomplete records.

Second, the prosecution and special counsel submitted an affidavit to t former President Park Geun-hye's trial that completely contradicted the evidence of the 2012 telecommunications bill payment record for Choi Soon-sil's tablet and Kim Han-soo's alibi. The prosecution and special counsel questioned Kim Han-soo with the same incomplete affidavit and forced Kim to give false testimony at former President Park Geun-hye's trial. 



Third, the prosecution and special counsel falsified the “SK Telecom Service Contract for Choi Soon-sil Tablet” (hereinafter “Choi Soon-sil Tablet Contract”), which served as a key piece of evidence supporting Kim Han-soo's “false alibi.” In addition to Kim Han-soo, the prosecution and special counsel also colluded with SK Telecom to add information about “telecommunication charges made by credit card of Ma:rei Company” in the forged document in late 2016. This information was not included in the original 2012 telecom service contract.


D. Prosecutors and special counsel forged the “Choi Soon-sil tablet contract.”

The forgery of the “Choi Soon-sil Tablet Contract” is a case where the forgery itself automatically proves intentionality, as it is a manipulation of a “certificate of authenticity”.

The “Choi Soon-sil Tablet Contract” was not only submitted to the first criminal trial of former President Park Geun-Hye on charges of leaking official secrets but also to the first criminal trial of Media Watch for defamation of the JTBC Broadcasting Compan. It was used as evidence to find the defendant guilt in each case. Media Watch was able to receive all eight pages of the “Choi Soon-sil Tablet Contract” during the appeal trial. 

MediaWatch's careful examination of the 'Choi Soon-Sil Tablet Contract' revealed that it was not a legitimate contract. While there are more than a dozen points of suspicion, there are two main areas of serious concern.

First, the signatures on pages 1 and 3 of the contract were completely different from those on pages 2, 4, and 5. According to the handwriting analysis, pages 1 and 3 of the contract belong to Kim Han-soo, but pages 2, 4, and 5 do not belong to Kim Han-soo, which is a fatal problem that renders the entire contract invalid. Second, the entire page 1 of the contract was written in the Handwriting of one person, including the sections often written by the carrier employee, such as device information and terms and conditions. On page 1 of the contract, Kim handwrote all of the complex new service subscription information on behalf of the employee. This is virtually unheard of in carrier agencies' standard practices. 




These problems can be explained by the fact that the original contract, which was written in June 2012 and stored on the SK Telecom server, was rewritten and re-stored on the SK Telecom server at the end of 2016. The prosecution and Kim Han-soo colluded to rewrite pages 1 and 3 of the original contract to include information on the Ma:rei company being the payer of the telecommunication bills. The forged contract was then submitted by the prosecution during former President Park and MediaWatch's criminal trials. 

E. Tablet Manipulation Investigation Confirmed with Lawsuit against SK Telecom and Kim Han-soo

Byun Hee-jae identified the above issues in the first half of 2020 and filed a criminal complaint with the police against SK Telecom as an accomplice in the manipulation of the Choi Soon-sil tablet contract. However, the investigation did not proceed smoothly. In 2022, Byun Hee-jae filed a civil lawsuit against SK Telecom (Seoul Central District Court 2022Gahap502162) and Kim Han-soo (Seongnam Branch 2022Gadan236711), respectively. He sought damages for the fabricated evidence, which SK Telecom and Kim Han-soo also participated in creating, which was used to find Byun guilty in his criminal trial. (Seoul Central District Court 2018GoDan3660).

In response to Byun Hee-jae's lawsuit, SK Telecom denied that it had tampered with the ‘Choi Soon-sil Tablet Contract’ and presented the court with a sample contract that was created in the same way as the ‘Choi Soon-sil Tablet Contract.’ It was another subscriber's “Youth Mobile Phone Contract” created around the same time as evidence. In fact, the signatures on the first and third pages of the “sample contract” were also different from the signatures on the second and fourth pages, and the entire contract was written in one handwriting. The same handwriting was consistent even in the columns often filled out by the carrier employee, which included information like device information and contact details. 

However, this “sample contract” was eventually confirmed to be falsified. Handwriting analysis revealed that pages 1 and 3 of the “sample contract” had been handwritten by Kim Han-soo. In order to cover up the problems associated with the “Choi Soon-Sil Tablet Contract,” SK Telecom brought Kim Han-soo back to create a sample contract in the same style. 

Crucially, it was further revealed in the lawsuit against Kim that the “sample contract” in question had the handwriting of Kim Han-soo, but the names on the contract were of Yoon Hong XXX (subscriber) and Yoon Seok XXX (legal representative). This proved 100% conclusively that the sample contract was a fake contract. 




The 'Sample Contract' was the evidence that SK Telecom submitted to the court to prove that the “Choi Soon Sil Tablet Contract” was not fabricated. Therefore, it is logically evident that the fabrication of the “Sample Contract” proves the fact that the “Choi Soon Sil Tablet Contract” is also fabricated. It's likewise logically obvious that “establishing the fact of Choi Soon-sil tablet contract's forgery” automatically suggests “falsifying the actual user of Choi Soon-sil Tablet and the method of its acquisition.”

The prosecution and special counsel's fabricated investigation of the “Choi Soon-sil tablet” in collusion with Kim Han-soo and SK Telecom has been completely proven.




미디어워치 편집부 mediasilkhj@gmail.com

미디어워치 일시후원

ⓒ 미디어워치 & mediawatch.kr

인기기사

LOGO

창닫기
PC버전으로 보기

Copyrights 2006 All Rights Reserved | 대표전화 : 02-720-8828 | FAX : 02-720-8838 | 대표이메일 : mediasilkhj@gmail.com | 사업장 주소 : 서울특별시 마포구 마포대로4길 36, 2층 | 등록·발행연월일 2013년 3월 27일 | 정기간행물 등록번호 : 서울, 다08208 , 영등포, 라00483 | 인터넷신문 등록번호 : 서울, 아02558 | 사업자등록번호((주)미디어실크에이치제이) : 101-86-45323 | 대표이사 : 변희재 | 발행인 : 변희재 | 편집인 : 황의원 | 청소년보호책임자 : 황의원