<Anchor> We will



continue to look at the response of the military authorities.

Our military was grasping in near real time what happened for about six hours before the missing Mr. Lee was discovered and killed by the North Korean military.

It was possible because it intercepts North Korean communications, but it is actually an open secret that North Korea knows about it.

The military seems to have been unable to request rescue or repatriation in case the performance of the intercepted equipment will be exposed even after knowing the movement of North Korea, but awareness of the situation has always been easy.



This is Tae-hoon Kim, a reporter specializing in defense.



<Reporter>



After reporting that Mr.

Lee

disappeared on the 21st, the military and the coast guard viewed Mr. Lee's disappearance as a personal accident, such as loss or suicide.



[Seowook / Defense Minister (Yesterday's National Assembly Defense Committee): At first, I thought that the disappearance was a common situation because it happened occasionally from the coast to the sea...

.]



However, on the afternoon of the 22nd, a very special situation was caught by a military interception equipment in which a ship from a North Korean fishery business found Lee and interrogated it.



The military reinforced the interception of the North Korean ships to grasp the details of dragging the floats on which Mr. Lee was carried with ropes.



It was reported to the command in real time, but the situation did not change.



[Seo Wook/Minister of Defense (Yesterday's National Assembly Defense Committee): I was rescued from there, and I was thinking that I would be repatriated like this, or go through such a procedure.



It is also known that concerns that the performance of the interception equipment could be exposed to the military's failure to engage in aggressive actions such as requesting repatriation during those six hours.



An official in the military said, "Eavesdropping is an open secret so North Korea often makes false and fake communications for disturbing purposes." Said.



On the other hand, the military's perception from disappearance to the attack was easy, while the criticism that the military was struggling to keep the public secret of intercepted information assets left nothing to say.



(Video coverage: Jaeyoung Lee, Video editing: Jeongsam Park)