By Shim Jae-yun
Staff Reporter

The nation’s three mobile phone companies have submitted details on nearly one million mobile phone calls to the prosecution and intelligence agencies.

In a report to the science and technology committee of the National Assembly on Tuesday, the Ministry of Communication and Information (MIC) acknowledged that records for a total of 987,338 mobile phone calls were submitted to law enforcement agencies.

This means one out of every 34 mobile phone subscribers has been subjected to the search as there are a total of 35 million cellular phone subscribers in Korea. But an MIC official said this assumption is an exaggeration because several phone calls are included for one subscriber.

The cases break down to 613,794 for SK Telecom, 261,702 for KTF and 111,842 for LG Telecom.

The submitted documents contain information on dialogues, locations of callers, birthplaces of callers and other personal information of subscribers.

The revelation has caught the nation by surprise as the spy agency and other law enforcement authorities were found to have engaged in systematic searches for phone conversation contents by the mobile phone subscribers under the current Roh Moo-hyun administration.

The revelation came in the middle of an on-site investigation by the Assembly committee members at the mobile phone companies over alleged information leaks on reporters’ telephone conversations.

A lawmaker on Tuesday claimed Lee Jong-seok, deputy head of the National Security Council (NSC), had ordered the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to search for the telephone conversation content of a reporter at the Hankook Ilbo.

Lee earlier came under fire for another allegation that he called on the NIS to search for the contents of a telephone conversation by a journalist at the vernacular Kookmin Ilbo.

During a National Assembly interpellation on foreign affairs and unification issues, Rep. Hong Moon-jong said the Hankook Ilbo reporter, identified by his family name Kim, told him directly the fact.

Hong of the opposition Grand National Party (GNP) criticized Lee for having abused his position to get information through the records of mobile phone conversations.

The NSC rebuffed Hong’s claim, describing the remark as groundless. ``We express deep regret that the National Assembly raised the unconfirmed issue,’’ it said.

Members of the National Assembly’s science and information committee on Tuesday tried to conduct on-site investigation into the allegation that three major mobile phone companies provided the NSC with information on the mobile phone conversation between reporters and government officials.

The investigation team consisting of 12 lawmakers and experts attempted the probes covering SK Telecom, KTF and LG Telecom, but failed to do so because of resistance from the companies.