Seoul's bungling spies face backlash

By Sunny Lee Intelligence Service (NIS), the nation's main spy agency, had secretly entered the hotel room of visiting Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's delegation, including Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro. The episode sparked a national controversy, with bipartisan calls for the resignation of NIS director Won Sei-hoon, a crony of Lee. Three NIS agents, two males and one female, all dressed in black suits, allegedly broke into the Indonesian delegation's hotel room last month in downtown Seoul in an attempt to steal classified arms deal information from the envoy's laptop computer. Unexpectedly, an Indonesian aide returned to the room and encountered the intruders who were in the middle of copying files from the computer. The three trespassers didn't harm the Indonesian, but fled immediately. Jakarta officially asked Seoul to verify the media allegations, which cited senior government officials acknowledging the act, anonymously. The spy agency remained non-committal. South Korean media outlets for days headlined the spy bungle, leading to a closed-door parliamentary hearing and with the attendance of NIS head Won. People were outraged too, citing a "national shame" for doing unethical things to a visiting foreign delegation. Pundits also jeered at the "lack of professionalism" of the nation's top intelligence apparatus. National police chief Cho Hyun-oh was reluctant to probe the case, saying there wouldn't be any "national benefit" for a police investigation. Under intensifying pressure, the police have been compelled to act, however, as the NIS easily outranks the police; they are in the odd position of having to give the appearance of carrying out an investigation, while also not making the NIS seem in the wrong. For instance, the faces of the unmasked three agents were filmed by numerous closed-circuit TV cameras, which numbered as many as 250 at the five-star Lotte Hotel, but police said the footage was blurry, making it hard to identify the individuals, a claim disputed by the hotel. There were also fingerprints on the laptop computer from which the agents were trying to copy the classified information, but the police said it would take a "considerable time" to identify suspects because some of the fingerprints were from the Indonesian delegation. South Korea strictly enforces fingerprinting when issuing resident registration cards. So, there would no technical problem identifying any suspect, according to South Korean media reports. Hotel employees also saw the fleeing agents, but police didn't bother to contact them until five days after the incident. Interestingly, in addition to the media and the public, politicians across party lines have come forward to criticize the spy caper. Lawmaker Hong Joon-pyo, a Supreme Council member at President Lee's Grand National Party (GNP), harshly decried the NIS, asking Won to resign. "The NIS, which has been criticized for failing to anticipate and adequately cope with North Korea's attacks last year on the corvette Cheonan and Yeonpyeong Island, is now drawing international jeers," Hong fumed. Another GNP legislator, Chung Doo-un, also directly called for Lee to sack Won. That's an indirect challenge to Lee, since Won is a crony of Lee. When Lee was mayor of Seoul, Won was the vice mayor. It was widely believed that Won, without previous intelligence work, got the position as head of the NIS due to his personal ties with Lee. "The criterion for choice is how close he is to the president," said the local weekly Sisa Journal. The resignation of Won therefore would deal a severe blow to Lee, who is already battling charges he is a lame-duck. Defenders of the NIS fiasco point out that the intelligence service was merely "doing its job" for the national interest, even if the target was a visiting foreign delegation. The infiltration was likely aimed at gaining an upper hand in negotiations over the possible sale of T-50 Golden Eagle, an advanced jet trainer that can be upgraded to a fighter-bomber, to Indonesia. The Indonesians were said to be also considering a subsonic Russian plane, the Yak-130. NIS supporters also say that espionage is "common" even among friendly countries, citing how South Korean negotiators for a free-trade agreement with the United States, Seoul's staunch ally, were very careful while staying in the United States about which hotel they chose. Interestingly, in the domestic discourse, the spy bungle has sparked calls for the agency to do some "soul-searching". It has a bad reputation of serving as a governmental tool to suppress democracy in South Korea's history. In the recent history of successive military dictatorships, the powerful agency primarily served to oppress dissidents, torture democracy activists and incarcerate political rivals. The NIS, which used to be called the "Korean CIA", as it was modeled after the US Central Intelligence Agency, kidnapped Kim Dae-jung, a democracy dissident who later became president, and tried to dump him into the sea with his body bound. Kim later won a Nobel Peace Prize. Nonetheless Kim, after he became president, also faced accusations that his government was conducting illegal wiretapping on political rivals. It was fashionable in the agency's past to accuse political opponents and democracy activities of being "North Korean sympathizers" and subject them to harsh torture. Even lawmakers were no exception if they didn't offer "cooperation" to the South's military regimes. Lawmaker Kim Seong-gon, for example, had his moustache pulled out one hair at a time, according to the investigative Sisa Journal magazine. The beating that was handed out to Gil Jae-ho, another lawmaker arrested together with Kim, left him disabled for life. Both were tortured at the agency's interrogation center, located inside Seoul's central Namsan Mountain. The agency also summoned journalists who wrote critical articles about the dictatorship government to beat them. The phrase, "I ate noodles at Namsan," was used among journalists in reference to the food NIS interrogators handed out, according to the Sisa Journal. The NIS has also been accused of rigging the stock market, profiting from major developments and illegally importing Japanese cars for sale on the domestic market, wrote the Sisa Journal. Lawmakers have said that in response to the scandal, the NIS has also planted misinformation to divert people's attention. On March 4, there were reports about imminent visits of Kim Jong-eun, North Korea's heir, to China that grabbed wide attention. But lawmaker Choi Jae-sung claimed the NIS, attributed as source of the story, was "leaking inaccurate North Korean intelligence" in an effort to divert the public's attention from the NIS fiasco. "It is very common for the NIS to provide such unconfirmed North Korean intelligence," Choi said in a briefing to reporters. Sohn Hak-kyu, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), urged President Lee to "normalize" the spy agency, arguing that it, under Won, made the overzealous blunder due to internal competition to please the nation's top leader, Lee. "I demand President Lee put all state organizations back to where they were and pave the grounds for democracy," Sohn said. Park Jie-won, the floor leader of the DP, said the resignation of Won would bring the NIS back to its "original mission of serving the people", and not serving the interests of those in power. One year ago, the South Korean magazine Monthly Chosun ran an article comparing Mossad, Israel's main spy agency, with the NIS in terms of their track records and professionalism. It concluded that "the NIS is an amateur" in comparison. A year later, with the Indonesian spy fiasco, the NIS seems to have confirmed this appraisal. As a recently democratized country, which has become the world's 14th-largest economy, the reform of the spy agency from an amateur organ into a truly professional and respectable intelligence agency should include not just better skills of espionage and bugging, but also the necessity to serve the people. While reporting the NIS fiasco, the South Korean newspaper Pressian described the spy organization as "unscrewed", a popular Korean expression that indicates morally laxity or ill discipline. Perhaps, it's time that the NIS was "screwed". Sunny Lee (sleethenational@gmail.com) is a Seoul-born columnist and journalist; he has degrees from the US and China. (Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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