By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter

Lawmakers seem set to raise doubts on a number of issues related to the nation’s murky past, following the passage of a bill aimed at reviewing and cleaning up suspicious cases in modern history.

The bill was passed in a plenary session of the National Assembly last Tuesday after months of tug-of-war between the ruling Uri Party and the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP).

As a result, an independent committee will be able to inquire not only into power abuse cases of previous authoritarian regimes as the ruling party wanted, but also into the atrocities committed by ``those who deny or antagonize the legitimacy of the government,’’ as the GNP pushed for.

A group of ruling and opposition lawmakers opened the debate on Friday by calling for the committee’s investigatory authority to be broadened to include a potentially contentious issue.

Rep. Lee In-young of the ruling party said during a news conference at the Assembly that now the truth must be told about a case of an allegedly faked will in 1991.

According to a statement signed by 113 lawmakers, the government, led by former President Roh Tae-woo, pinned trumped up charges on Kang Ki-hoon, an activist, for forging the will of his friend and fellow activist, Kim Ki-sul.

``By faking the case against Kang, the Roh Tae-woo administration tried to distract public attention away from a series of self-immolations by activists protesting against the government’s violent oppression of that time,’’ the statement said. ``And it succeeded in doing just that, by falsely accusing an innocent man and making him serve a jail term and live in disgrace.’’

Naming the case as a ``Korean version of the Dreyfus affair,’’ lawmakers from the ruling party and the progressive Democratic Labor Party as well as two legislators from the GNP argued that now is the right time to reinvestigate it as the bill has just passed the legislature.

Prospects remain uncertain for the case to come under actual investigation, as the bill does not explicitly allow cases settled in court to be reviewed by the committee. But it stipulates that the committee members can decide whether there is sufficient reason for reviewing it and commence with an investigation that way.

Lawmakers who participated in Friday’s conference are largely from the so-called ``386 generation,’’ which refers to those who attended universities during the 1980s and tend to favor the ``reform drive.’’

Legislators of the conservative GNP might soon counter such a move by suggesting its own suspicious cases for the committee’s investigation, according to sources at the Assembly.

During the debate on the passage of the bill, some GNP members pushed for the cases allegedly related to North Korean agents. They include the death of Lee Han-young, nephew of Kim Jong-il’s former wife Sung Hae-rim. Lee, who defected to the South, was shot to death near Seoul in 1997, which South Korean intelligence officials believed was done by North Korean agents.

Observers worry the bill might trigger political debates regarding the history, spilling over into an ideology dispute. For example, reinvestigation into the nation’s independence movements is expected to shed more light on unknown independence activities. But restoring honor to independence fighters with socialist links is likely to be met with heated debate.

The 15-member independent committee will be inaugurated in November when the bill starts to take effect. The committee members are obliged and entitled to shed light on shadowy spots in history ranging from independence movements before the nation’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 to suspicious deaths during previous authoritarian governments led by former presidents Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo.

saltwall@koreatimes.co.kr