Special Chapter - The digital manipulation that helped to impeach the president 

I already promised to tell you about the digital manipulation of the photo that led to the president's impeachment. I suppose all non-Koreans know nothing about this case, that's why I'll include that in the chapter. It's just an example of how Korea has an experience in too obviously forging evidences; manipulating the public opinion; sentencing people based only on no-existing and proved false evidences; and covering up the real evidences and witnesses.

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In 20 Oct. 2016, a tablet that allegedly was owned (from 2012 to 2014) by CSS, was presented by JTBC. The media claims to found the tablet in the abandoned office of Blue K in Germany, previously used by CSS. On the tablet, allegedly, there were documents that the president Park allegedly let CSS look at and even edit! This shook the whole nation. 

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Later, suspicions were raised that there is no proof that this tablet is owned by CSS and that the real owner of the tablet is an administrator in the Blue House, Kim Hansoo. By the way, Mr. Kim is a class-mate of CSS's nephew (not the one that Kim Sang Gyo had to accuse as the first assaulter, but another nephew). Kim Hansoo bought the tablet on his name and all the time he was paying its bills. The tablet was sent for analysis in NFS. But before submitting it to NFS, JTBC was keeping it for more than a week and "contaminated" it as evidence. Later it was proved that JTBC deleted and edited photos, overwrote metadata, installed apps, etc. on the tablet. 

 

To prove that this is CSS's tablet, on Oct. 26, 2016 JTBC presented a "selfie" of CSS that was found in the tablet. And according to their logics, if there is a single selfie of CCS, then it's definitely her tablet! After JTBC's report came out, almost all media in Korea cited CSS's selfie. If you search on Naver there are almost 600 articles "Choi Soon-sil's selfie". 

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Later on, the NFS analysis proved that in the original photo clearly are visible CSS's both hands, and if it's a "selfie" she needs to have 3 hands! But JTBC just cut off the lower part of the photo and made it looks like "selfie"! Such a simple but effective manipulation, it's it? The analysis also showed that there are other photos, most of them selfies of CSS nephew's daughter. They were shot during a dinner shared between CSS, Mr. Kim, CSS' nephew and his family. It was proved by the NFS digital analysis that the photo is not CSS's selfie. An expert from NFS witnessed in court that they couldn't find any single evidence and also there is no logic this to be CCS tablet, but all this was neglected by the court and by the media! 

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The other obvious manipulations - it was proved that on the tablet originally there was no text editing software, so it's impossible for CSS to read and edit these documents on this device. On the tablet there is no single photo of CSS's daughter or from the frequently visited places in Germany; the geolocation data of the tablet matches only twice with places where CSS have visited, but the time of visit doesn't match; in the recovered kakaotalk conversations between Mr. Kim and CSS, his name is on the right, as the chat's "I" and CSS's name in on the left, as the chat's "guest". (by the way, did you notice - the recovered by NFS kakaotalk chat it NOT on Excel file, but it appears exactly the same way as it looks in the mobile device!)

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But all this was omitted and CSS and president Park were sentenced based on the "fact" that this is CSS's tablet and president Park shared with CSS on this tablet national secrets!! Just like in JH's case, isn't it?! There are really lots of more interesting facts about the first Nongdan that are very similar to our case, but it's too long to write it here.