In their zeal to catch North Korean spies, the South’s spooks are damaging their standing
By S.C.S. | SEOUL
IN RECENT years the sentences of a number of South Koreans, wrongly accused three decades ago of spying for the North, have been reversed. The acquittals serve as a heartening reminder of how far the now-democratic South has come since its former military dictatorship tortured political enemies and fabricated evidence to frame them. Last month five defendants in the infamous “Burim” case of 1981—in which students were convicted of convening a seditious book club to support the North Korean regime—were cleared of all charges. This month the court cleared a Korean-Japanese man accused in 1982 of espionage for the North.
Since then, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) has changed name (in 1999, for the second time) and shed its thuggishness. Yet its zeal in catching pro-North agitators appears undimmed. The number of new cases charged under the South’s National Security Law, which prohibits South Koreans from contact with the North or praising its gangster regime, almost doubled between 2008 and 2011—from 46 to 90 cases—while former conservative president Lee Myung-bak was in office. In his term, 31 North Korean spies were arrested (compared to 14 under the late liberal president Roh Moo-hyun). According to Oh Changik of Citizens' Solidarity for Human Rights, a Korean lobby, eight people have been put under investigation for spying since Park Geun-hye, the current president, took office in February 2013 (the ministry of justice would not give The Economist official figures, on the basis that their publication could harm "major national interests"). All eight, says Mr Oh, entered the South as North Korean defectors. Some say the spike in arrests reveals increased espionage from the North, as relations have soured. In 2010 the length of routine detentions and interrogations for North Korean arrivals was doubled, from a 90-day maximum to six months.
But the South’s efforts have been complicated by a series of intelligence mishaps. Won Sei-hoon, the former head of the NIS who resigned last March, is himself currently undergoing trial on charges of discrediting key opposition figures as pro-North leftists online and manipulating public opinion in favour of Ms Park in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election that brought her to power. The NIS says that its online posts were routine psychological warfare operations against North Korea. Now the president’s new spy chief, Nam Jae-joon, is under mounting pressure from the opposition and ruling-party politicians alike to step down amid an investigation into his agency's alleged fabrication of evidence in an espionage case. Last week prosecutors carried out a rare raid of the spooks’ headquarters—the second time the offices have been searched in just over a year. On March 15th prosecutors arrested an NIS agent in connection with the forgery.
Last August Yu Wu-seong, a defector and former government official, was acquitted on charges of spying for the North Korean regime and supplying it with information on fellow defectors living in the South. His sister, under routine questioning by the NIS on her arrival to South Korea, told the agency that her brother was a spy—then said at his trial that she had made the statement under duress. Mr Yu was found not guilty. The prosecution appealed the verdict and submitted three immigration documents confirming Mr Yu had travelled to North Korea through China on two occasions. But last month the Chinese embassy in Seoul determined all three documents were forgeries. A broker working for the NIS attempted suicide earlier this month; in a note he said that he was employed by the NIS to obtain the documents, but also that he thought Mr Yu was a spy. (Mr Yu, it transpired, is a Chinese national: he has admitted to forging a North Korean identity card in order to receive benefits reserved for defectors living in Seoul.) This week Mr Yu’s lawyers said that the prosecution and the NIS had not only fabricated evidence, but had also tortured Mr Yu’s younger sister. The prosecution has now opened an enquiry into whether the NIS was aware of the falsification.
Park Jumin of Lawyers for a Democratic Society, an activist group based in Seoul, says evidence in another high-profile espionage case, this time of a South Korean MP, is thin too. In August 2013 the NIS revealed it was investigating Lee Seok-ki, a leftist MP, on charges of plotting an insurrection to sabotage South Korean infrastructure in the event of war with the North. Mr Lee referred to the investigation as a "medieval witch hunt". According to Gallup, a pollster, almost two-thirds of South Koreans surveyed supported his arrest. But the severity of his punishment—he was sentenced last month to 12 years in prison—has disquieted many Koreans. Key evidence against Mr Lee, especially the transcript submitted by the NIS, was called into question by the courts, as some parts of the original recording were missing. Mr Park says the courts needed to correct the spies’ transcript in over 270 instances, suggesting their original report was aimed, first and foremost, at fomenting public anger. Critics claim that too much of the evidence against Mr Lee is based on his penchant for North Korean revolutionary songs.
While few have any sympathy for Mr Lee’s extreme views (he has been imprisoned for pro-North activity once before), his sudden arrest triggered suspicions that the NIS is trying to deflect attention from the enquiry into the election and its own suspected illegal activities. Pyo Changwon, a former professor at the National Police Academy, says that conservative Korean politicians still use the trauma of the Korean war, and South Koreans’ anxiety over the northern threat, as a “secret weapon” to gloss over political mischief. Though the government set up a bipartisan committee to reform the NIS last December, it achieved little before being disbanded last month. And more arrests continue to justify an enhanced role for the agency. Mr Oh says the government is trying to “simulate a security crisis”—and that North Korea has little capacity to send “old-fashioned spies” to the South. Many say the NIS should not be allowed both to gather intelligence and to investigate in espionage cases (elsewhere, these two functions are handled by separate agencies). But, as the South and the world cope with an increasingly unpredictable North Korea, arguments for giving the NIS more power are likely to prevail.
