The Presidential Archives of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said on the 30th that it provided the claimant with 28 items from the list of presidential-designated records related to rescue operations on the day of the Sewol ferry disaster.
This information disclosure decision follows the result of the remand trial to the lower court on Apr. 10 at the Seoul High Court regarding the lawsuit to cancel the decision to withhold the list of Sewol-related designated records.
With the government side deciding not to appeal the ruling in favor of the plaintiff, the ruling has been finalized. It is being disclosed for the first time in 9 years since the related lawsuit began.
The lawsuit began in June 2017 when the Presidential Archives at the time rejected a request for information disclosure seeking the release of the list of presidential-designated records related to passenger rescues on the day of the Sewol ferry disaster.
At the time, the Presidential Archives determined that the information could not be released because its protection period had been designated under the Presidential Records Management Act.
However, in the remand trial, the court ruled that the information could not be considered to have lawfully met the designation requirements set by law, and therefore the non-disclosure decision was unlawful.
The information subject to this disclosure is a total of 28 items from the list of presidential-designated records produced or received by the presidential office and the Office of National Security during the Sewol ferry disaster on Apr. 16, 2014. However, the contents of the listed records are not subject to this disclosure.
Han Seong-won, director of the Presidential Archives, said, "We expect that releasing this list will guarantee the public's right to know and help enhance administrative transparency."