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The move is likely to enrage North Korea, which has a nuclear arsenal and has repeatedly condemned its southern neighbor in recent months, without even avoiding President Moon Jae-in’s personal insults.
Prosecutors in the Seoul Central District received a criminal complaint against Kim Yo Jong from a lawyer who works in the city and launched a proper investigation, a prosecutor told the AFP news agency.
Last month, Pyongyang blew up a liaison office between the two Koreas on its side of the border, days after Kim Yo Jong, one of his brother’s closest advisers, said the “useless” building would soon “collapse. completely”.
Before it exploded, North Korea announced a series of biliary accusations against Seoul of leaflets with anti-regime propaganda sent by fugitives in balloons or floating bottles across the militarized border.
Pyongyang had further increased the pressure with its threats to take military action against Seoul, but later decided to reduce tensions and abandoned those plans.
In his complaint, attorney Lee Kyung-jae claims that the exploited liaison office was owned by South Korea because it was renovated with Seoul funds, even though it was located on the north side of the border.
Kim Yo Jong “used explosives to destroy South Korea’s” quasi-diplomatic mission building “that served the public interest,” the complaint said.
Lee Kyung-jae also complained about the role of Pak Jong Chon, chief of staff for the North Korean Army, in the incident.
The South Korean Penal Code, the lawyer emphasized, stipulates the death penalty or imprisonment of at least seven years for damaging property or disrupting the peace through the use of explosives.
The death penalty is still formally used in South Korea, although no executions have been carried out in the country since 1997.
In fact, it would be almost impossible for Seoul officials to punish Kim Yo Jong or Pak Jong Chong, but Lee Kyung-jae told the Yonhap news agency that he would “inform the North Korean people about the hypocrisy of their leaders.”
The message came a week after a court in Seoul ordered a leader of the Pyongyang regime to pay compensation to prisoners of war who had spent decades in North Korea. This move could set a powerful legal precedent on a divided peninsula.
Relations between the two Koreans have intensified since the beginning of last year, when Kim Jong Uno’s meeting with United States President Donald Trump in Hanoi collapsed over disagreements about what North Korea should abandon in exchange for facilitating international sanctions.
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