Police said Wednesday that a main suspect in the recent hacking attack on the national election watchdog's Web site had several phone conversations with an aide to the house speaker after launching the attack, adding to suspicions the crime was potentially politically motivated.
The 27-year-old suspect, surnamed Kong, spoke with the secretary of National Assembly Speaker Park Hee-tae on the phone six times while the attack was under way on the day of the Oct. 26 by-elections for Seoul mayor and other local governmental posts.
Park, who currently has no party affiliation, was formerly a member of the ruling Grand National Party (GNP).
The large-scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack paralyzed the Web site of the National Election Commission (NEC) for two hours on the morning of the election. The attack also targeted the official Web site of Park Won-soon, then the leading Seoul mayor candidate who ended up winning.
Earlier this month, police uncovered that a low-level secretary of Choi Ku-sik, a two-term lawmaker of the GNP, was behind the hacking attack. Kong was arrested earlier in December, but Rep. Choi has consistently denied his involvement.
Kong allegedly hired a professional hacker to paralyze the Web sites of the watchdog and the liberal-minded candidate. Police said the hacker employed zombie PCs to cause excessive traffic, leading the Web sites to shut down.
In the latest development, police said Kong went drinking with the parliamentary chairman's secretary surnamed Kim and a few others the night before the by-election.
Kim, a close friend of Kong, also denied his involvement during a police interrogation on Tuesday. He resigned as a secretary for the Assembly speaker after the scandal emerged.
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