It’s the KGB’s Fault!

Astronaut candidate Ko San, who was replaced at the last moment by Yi So-yeon as Korea’s first astronaut, suspects spy agencies were behind his sudden replacement:

Astronaut candidate Ko San said Friday that he didn’t understand his sudden replacement — in March — on Korea’s first mission to the International Space Station (ISS), and intimated that some spy agencies had meddled in the process.

Ko reversed a previous statement from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) that the Russian space agency replaced him with Yi So-yeon because he tried to send home classified documents in a parcel. He declined to say what had really irked the Russians and caused his abrupt exit from the program announced on March 8, only a month before the launch.

“I’m not that stupid to try to steal important documents that way. There were really subtle incidents and Russian officials later agreed they did not matter,” Ko told The Korea Times after a press conference in Seoul. “The replacement of astronauts was a very complicated matter because intelligence agencies were involved in it.”

Ko admits he did try to learn how to fly the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which was technically speaking a no-no, but the Russian training environment is apparently quite vague about what is and isn’t on:

Ko, whose mission was to conduct scientific and educational experiments on the ISS, said it was true that he tried to learn how to fly the Soyuz spaceship, but that it was done with the agreement of his Russian colleagues and instructors, and in some cases that they even encouraged it.

“Strictly speaking, it was against regulations. But the boundary of legitimate and illegitimate was very vague in the training,” he said to the press. “I was allowed to ask questions and see flight manuals when I wanted to, because I had to understand the systems and I had to know how to operate the spacecraft to some degree. Even my Russian colleagues Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko understood this very well, so they requested our instructors to teach me those things.”

His new remarks are in stark contrast to those he said in March when he and Yi were still at the Russian space center, waiting for the launch. In a press release then, Ko apologized for a personal blunder, saying he had “crossed the line.”

The Russians, of course, are well-known for their easy-going attitudes toward security.

The Korea Times notes there are several conspiracy theories out there, most notably one run by the Sin Dong-A magazine claiming Ko was replaced in retaliation for Seoul’s investigation of Russian diplomats. Another magazine though Russian inter-agency issues may have played a part.