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Former Blue House Chief of Staff Lee Byung-kee walks through a crowd of reporters on his way to the Democratic Party leader’s office at the National Assembly on Feb. 19

Former Chief of Staff Lee Byung-kee, second-in-command at the Blue House under the Park Geun-hye administration (2013–16), had a major hand in a number of controversial actions with regard to diplomatic and social issues at the time, recent evidence shows. In particular, Lee was found to have held secret negotiations regarding a Dec. 2015 agreement with Japan on the comfort women issue and ordered Blue House senior secretaries to publicly describe the song “March for the Beloved” as “ideologically biased.”

In a parliamentary audit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the National Assembly on Oct. 12, Democratic Party lawmaker and Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee member Park Byeong-seug said the comfort women agreement announced by the South Korean and Japanese governments on Dec. 28, 2015, was the result of a “behind-the-scenes agreement” between Lee and Japanese National Security Advisor Shotaro Yachi.

“After holding [initial] secret talks with Yachi in late 2014 while he [Lee] was director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), Lee held an additional seven rounds of talks after taking over as Blue House Chief of Staff in Feb. 2015,” Park said.

Park explained that was the “result of orders from President Park Geun-hye, who said that Lee Byung-kee was the ‘window’ for the South Korea-Japan comfort women agreement.”

[Representative] Park also said practical affairs in negotiations on the comfort women issue were “handled by an NIS task force.”

“The eighth and last round of talks between Lee and Yachi took place on Dec. 23, 2015, at which time there was a signing that took place between the two,” he added, calling the moment “a humiliation and disgrace to the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

Evidence also points to Lee being as active as his predecessor as Chief of Staff, Kim Ki-choon, at manipulating public opinion and fanning security-related fears. A document titled “Implementation and Countermeasures for Presidential Chief of Staff Directives, 2015–2016” transcribed by Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Jae-jung from the Presidential Archives show Lee Byung-kee ordering a stern response to a large public rally that was held on Nov. 14, 2015. Presiding over a meeting of Blue House senior secretaries at the time, Lee was quoted as calling the event an “assembly of leftist forces.”

It was during the same rally that farmer Baek Nam-gi was left in critical condition after being struck by a water cannon jet – yet Lee complained to then-Senior Secretary to the President for Political Affairs Hyun Ki-hwan the following day that the police response had been “too defensive” and ordered that those committing criminal attacks should be “thoroughly tracked down and severely punished.”

Lee also gave orders at a senior secretaries’ meeting on May 16, 2015, in connection with growing support for a chorus of “March of the Beloved” at an event to commemorate the anniversary of the Gwangju Democratization Movement on May 18. Calling the work “a song unsuited to the nation’s identity,” Lee ordered “efforts to inform the public of the song’s ideological bias.”

By Choi Hye-jung and Song Ho-jin, staff reporters

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