The string of legal battles trailing the Moon Jae-in administration in search for the truth by the family of Lee Dae-jun may reach the former president himself.

Since January last year, Lee’s family has been has been looking for answers through the courts, and won access to Cheong Wa Dae records that are believed to hold clues about the events leading to as well as after his murder at the hands of North Korea in September 2020.

But Cheong Wa Dae appealed the court’s decision that allowed the family to view the records, and as Moon’s term ended in May, his office archived them as presidential records -- which would keep them secret for at least 15 years.

Last month President Yoon Suk-yeol’s office dropped the appeal filed by Cheong Wa Dae, and as a result the ruling that sided with the family was upheld. But the damage may already have been done, according to a judge at the Seoul high court

“After the records were moved to the Presidential Archives, the initial ruling was kind of nullified,” the judge told The Korea Herald on Monday. “The ruling was directed at Cheong Wa Dae and the Coast Guard, not the Presidential Archives.”

The judge said there were only two ways to gain access to presidential records. One is by two-thirds approval of the National Assembly, the majority of which is controlled by the Democratic Party of Korea until the next general election in 2024. The other is a warrant from the chief justice of a high court.

“So it comes down to either a National Assembly approval or a search warrant,” he said.

After the Coast Guard said on June 16 that there was no evidence Lee had tried to defect to North Korea, overturning its previous determination, the family asked for the Democratic Party of Korea’s help in unlocking the presidential records.

In their efforts to access the records, the family is running into a deadline. The country’s prosecution service, which is leading investigations surrounding Lee’s case, will lose the bulk of its powers to investigate come September, when Democratic Party-led laws come into effect.

During a meeting that took place on June 27, the family gave the Democratic Party leadership an ultimatum to act on the request to consent to opening up the Moon records by Wednesday.

But the prospects of the Democratic Party offering support appear slim.

The opposition’s interim leader Rep. Woo Sang-ho said at a June 17 press conference he has “no intentions” to cooperate in giving the family access to the records. “At this point there’s no sense in reigniting a case that had already resulted in an apology from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un,” he said.

If the National Assembly fails to establish an approval process, the family has said taking legal action against Moon may be one of the last remaining measures to resort to.

Kim Ki-yun, a lawyer working with the Lee family, said in previous interviews with The Korea Herald that he was “disinclined” to go after Moon unless it was unavoidable. “After all he is the former president. You don’t want to be on the other end of litigation with a president.”

In a phone call Tuesday, Kim said that the investigations that have been launched into some of Moon’s intelligence, military and maritime officials may lead to the high court issuing a warrant to search presidential records -- without the family having to file fresh criminal complaints against the ex-president.

Including Park Jie-won and Suh Hoon, the National Intelligence Service’s last two directors, and Seo Wook, the preceding minister of national defense, at least 10 officials from the prior administration are facing investigations by Seoul prosecutors.

The investigations are aimed to find out what the government was doing in the hours Lee could still have been saved, and what led to the announcements from top authorities at the time that he had intended to defect to North Korea.

Kim said that over the course of the investigations, there may be certain information that “can only be derived from the presidential materials, in which case the prosecutors may decide to ask for a search warrant from the court.”

There are several recent precedents of prosecutors raiding the Presidential Archives. Over five times during the Moon administration, prosecutors looked into his predecessor Park Geun-hye’s records.

“Given what’s been unveiled so far, it’s hard not to view the president as the final responsible figure. But we are still waiting to see how things unfold,” he said.

He said that at the end of the day, the family was “having to go the hard way” because of steps taken by the Moon administration to obstruct the records from being released. “The family already won once (in court). But Cheong Wa Dae appealed, and then classified the records.”

By Kim Arin (arin@heraldcorp.com)