NTS intelligence guru and ‘rumor journal news’ plant chief

The taxation information division of the National Tax Service is a unit that gathers information on tax evasions by companies and the rich. The division can gather information only when they can form close personnel network of "brotherhood" with information sources. To collect data, its members make contact with people at investigation or law enforcement authorities, including the presidential office, the Prime Minister’s Office, the prosecution, police, the Board of Audit and Inspection and the Financial Supervisory Board. The unit is dubbed the information hub where data from even the police network that is extensively spread across the nation, which illustrates the power of the National Tax Service that has the authority to determine the amount of tax levied on taxpayers.

On top of gathering information on taxation, the division is also tasked with the extra duty of tracing the mood and trends of power within the presidential office, and latest news published in newspapers, and debriefing them to the NTS chief. Depending on the NTS chief’s character, the unit sometimes reverses the main duty of collecting tax evasion information with supplementary roles of gathering data on trends and situations at powerful state agencies. Information in "Jeong Yoon-hoi document" from the office of discipline in officialdom at the presidential office, which President Park Geun-hye labeled as "rumor journal news," was sourced from Park Dong-yeol, former head of the Daejeon National Tax Office. Park served as the head of NTS’s taxation information division for two years from 2006, during the latter half of the Roh Moo-hyun administration.

Police Superintendent Park Gwan-cheon, who drafted the document, hails from the Daegu-North Geongsang region just like Park Dong-yeol. They are both alumni of Dongguk University. They are close acquaintances who formed friendship while serving as members of the Sajik-dong team (in charge of inspecting top officials and their relatives) during the Kim Young-sam administration. Park Dong-yeol is a famed intelligence guru at the NTS with far-reaching network of informants, and was nicknamed "news plant chief at rumor journal" among intelligence collectors. He rose to the head of the Daejeon National Tax Office despite starting his career in officialdom not through the High Civil Service Exam, which suggests he apparently had earned recognition for capability in duty.

The Hanwha Group headquarters building in Janggyo-dong, Seoul where prosecutors raided and searched on Tuesday houses the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Intelligence Wing Unit 2. As Hanwha was embroiled in leak of the document in question, the scandalous incident has spread to the business community. Companies whose owners are imprisoned seek high-caliber intelligence all the more. As the company office has been raided and searched soon after Hanwha Chairman Kim Seung-yeon returned to office, it is a shame on the conglomerate. We wonder how a veteran in the intelligence community and an intelligent investigation expert with robust tenacity became the men who produced "rumor journal news" that infuriated President Park Geun-hye. Stories in rumor journals can be up to 60 percent accurate, but oftentimes they are prove to be groundless, and cause a major stir in society