The latest response from the National Forensic Service (NFS) is a continuation of its fact-finding report from December 10th, submitted to the Seoul High Court. In that earlier report, the NFS stated that the so-called “Choi Soon-sil tablet” contained stored copies of all Blue House documents from the Park Geun-hye administration, yet there was no way to verify whether they had been accessed. The agency attributed this to evidence tampering by JTBC and the prosecution between October 18th and October 25th, 2016.

Following this, Media Watch submitted a supplementary inquiry to the NFS, specifically requesting verification regarding only the Dresden speech file–whether it was stored, accessed, or subject to evidence tampering. In response, the NFS reaffirmed its previous conclusion with the same findings.

Regarding the National Forensic Service’s latest response, Byun Hee-jae, CEO of Media Watch, stated:

“It has now been definitively revealed that the core claim in JTBC’s exclusive report on October 24th, 2016–alleging that Choi Seo-won (formerly Choi Soon-sil) had ‘previewed the president’s speech in advance’–was entirely false. The distinction between ‘storing’ a document and ‘viewing’ it is a fundamental factual difference in journalism. JTBC misled the public by falsely reporting the latter instead of the former.”

Byun further emphasized that the most serious issue is that the critical digital evidence that could have most conclusively proven Choi Seo-won’s innocence–showing she had never accessed the speech–was deliberately destroyed by JTBC and the prosecution. He added, “I will file a complaint with the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) against all those involved for the crime of malicious evidence destruction.”