In South Korea the summer of 2024 has been marked by a series of spy scandals, which vividly illustrate a number of the country’s domestic and foreign policy problems. Let us start with the scandal involving a data leak from South Korea’s Defense Intelligence Command (KDIC) in late June, potentially causing very serious damage to its “illegal” agents around the world.
What we know so far
On July 27, 2024, a number of South Korean media outlets reported that “the military is conducting an investigation into a leak of personal information of agents assigned to an intelligence unit tasked with spying on North Korea” and a closed-door meeting of the parliamentary intelligence committee was held on July 30. The results of the meeting, insofar as they have been disclosed, can be summarized as follows.
In June 2024, the National Intelligence Service notified its military counterpart, the KDIC, about a leak of classified information, including the identities of agents stationed overseas. The military counterintelligence service has launched an investigation into the incident.
The source of the leak turned out to be the personal (!!!) non-work related laptop of a civilian employee (a former senior military officer), on which he had saved classified information from a secure computer network. The recipient of the data is an ethnic Korean citizen of the PRC (or Joseonjok). The leak consists of several thousand confidential documents
The owner of the laptop is now in custody. He initially claimed that he had been the victim of hackers, but after a closed session in the National Assembly, two deputies reported that the investigation had refuted this claim. In any case, copying this kind of information to a “civilian” unprotected laptop is at the very minimum culpable negligence, and in fact this kind of data transfer could not be accidental.
This is not the first time South Korea’s military intelligence service has suffered a major data leak. In 2017, the Defense Department’s integrated data center was hacked, and about 15 million pages of classified information were leaked to North Korea, including a plan of an operation plan to disable North Korea’s military leadership and intelligence on North Korea provided by the US. In 2018, authorities discovered that an employee had been selling personal data and other information about South Korean secret agents based in China to “foreign organizations” since 2013.
It should be remembered that the current military intelligence structure was created in 2018 under Moon Jae-in, who dismantled the existing structures as part of the “military conspiracy case.”
How serious is this?
The leaks reportedly involved both official undercover agents working as diplomats and “secret agents” working under false identities and under the cover of entities unrelated to South Korean government agencies. As a result, the KDIC was forced to urgently recall a number of its staff back to South Korea, and the rest were ordered to cease active work and exercise extreme caution.
At least temporarily, intelligence activity has been paralyzed, and there may be more serious consequences in the form of expulsions, arrests, or media exposure. As the media have pointed out, the recall of foreign covert agents means that the intelligence networks they have built up could potentially collapse. Once such networks disintegrate, it is almost impossible to rebuild them (whistleblowers usually cooperate with a specific person, not the intelligence system in general), and it takes a long time to build new networks.
In addition, individuals whose names are known would be problematic to use for intelligence activities outside the country.
Moreover, not only the spies themselves, but also their contacts, could have been harmed, and contacts from North Korea, in particular, risked serious punishment. In fact, there have been speculations in the popular press about executions of some informants.
“This is a major incident that could lead to the collapse of South Korea’s human intelligence capabilities. I don’t think the military is taking this seriously enough,” Yang Uk, a military expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, told The Korea Times. He suggested that the internal investigation should be extended to include law enforcement agencies.
Defense Minister Shin Won-sik brushed off the above concerns at a plenary session of the parliamentary defense committee, but said that the government will take decisive measures to reorganize the intelligence command.
The Pyongyang trail?
The media almost immediately “found indications that the leaked data had been sent to North Korea”, after all, who else could the Chinese Korean be but a North Korean intelligence operative? However, no direct evidence of this has yet been found and as of July 6, 2024, investigators had found no connection between the suspect and North Korea.
However, it is in fact more likely that the leaked information was passed on to China’s intelligence services, given their habit of collecting any potentially useful information.
The definition of “spying”
Further investigation hit an unexpected snag. It turns out that the military prosecutor’s office was unable to bring espionage charges against the suspect. The reason is the wording of the Criminal Code, which defines espionage as ““activities aimed at obtaining benefit from the enemy”, and “a person who commits espionage in favor of the enemy may be sentenced to death, and his associates may be sentenced to death or to life imprisonment.” However, “enemy” refers exclusively to North Korea. Thus, a person who spies for another country or who passes state secrets to a foreign national who is not a North Korean cannot be charged with espionage.
And since Pyongyang’s involvement has not yet been established, the leak cannot be considered espionage, and thus the military prosecutor’s office was forced to file a charge of leaking military information, which carries a lesser penalty of up to 10 years’ imprisonment.
The above law was enacted in 1953, and it is that under understandable why under Syngman Rhee there was no punishment provided for spying for foreign countries other than North Korea. South Korea had contacts with a limited group of countries and the US was not perceived as a hostile nation.
It is therefore difficult to successfully bring espionage charges both against those who give away military secrets and those who transfer strategically important technology to third countries. In most countries, leaking state secrets is punishable as espionage, but in South Korea, as we can see, it is a separate and less serious offence.
Amendments to the law have apparently been submitted to the National Assembly several times, but, according to ruling party leader Han Dong-hoon, they were blocked by the Democratic Party, which automatically opposes any bill if it comes from the Conservatives. The Democratic Party disputes this assertion, saying that discussion of the bill did not take place because of disagreements between the Department of Justice and the National Court Administration on related issues, and also because of concerns by the Office of Court Administration (OCA) about the potential negative impacts on South Korea’s relations with foreign countries if such bills were passed.
And that, it seems, it not all.
Currently, the investigation is ongoing, but the attention on the military intelligence cases has brought to light several other internal conflicts within the KDIC, raising serious media concerns about poor discipline and operational readiness.
The most high-profile conflict was between a one-star brigadier general and a two-star major general. The brigadier general filed a complaint with the Department of National Defense’s investigative arm, charging his senior colleague with assault and abuse of authority. In response, the major general accused the brigadier general of insubordination. The identities of both have not yet been released, but the media is claiming that the major general is the head of the KDIC.
In May 2024, the major general reportedly raised concerns about the brigadier general’s intelligence activities, including his use of a civilian-owned facility for meetings. However, the brigadier general dismissed these allegations, calling the senior general an “amateur”.
Tensions between the two escalated when the major general allegedly instructed his assistant to monitor the brigadier general’s movements and in June threw a file folder at him – prompting the complaint.
But there is more to it than that. It has come to light that the KDIC has since February 2024 been making use for its operational activities of a private research institute headed by a retired lieutenant general and former KDIC head. The leaked documents indicate that the research institute, which employs “retired” former operatives responsible for North Korea-related intelligence, will provide support to military intelligence agency operations and play a key role in an espionage project known as the Gwanggaeto Project.
The Democrats responded to the scandal with their standard refrain, “This is what the President has brought the country to.” “As Commander-in-Chief, President Yoon Suk Yeol must explain what actions are being taken to address such lax military discipline. It raises concerns that he has been talking about national security without implementing any concrete measures,” said Democratic Party spokesperson Choi Min-suk.
The present author tends to agree, at least in part, as the high quality of South Korean intelligence is proverbial in expert circles. Even allies are not immune to scandals, as we shall see in the next article.
Konstantin Asmolov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
