Agency now admits agent wrote posts before election, but claims they were “psychological warfare” against North Korea
By Park Hyun-chul and Jung Hwan-bong, staff reporters
In regard to the activity of a National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent surnamed Kim, 29, on the left-leaning website Today’s Humor, the NIS admitted for the first time that Kim wrote posts on the website herself. Kim is being accused of trying to sway public opinion before last December’s presidential election. On Jan. 31, the NIS issued a press release titled “The NIS Position Concerning the Report by the Hankyoreh.” “The comments about which the Hankyoreh reported were posted by Kim to respond to propaganda intended to praise and whitewash North Korea on Today’s Humor, a website where messages posted with North Korean IP addresses often appear,” the NIS said in the press release. “These posts are part of our psychological warfare against North Korea, and they were not posted with any political intent.” It was only after the report by the Hankyoreh that the NIS reversed its previous position. It had been doggedly and dishonestly insisting that Kim had not posted anything herself. In the press release, the NIS explained that Kim’s online activity was part of psychological warfare with North Korea, giving examples of comments posted by Kim that dealt with criticism of North Korea’s missile launch and that discussed a decision by the Supreme Court about a violation of the National Security Act. “Misleading readers to think that these posted comments were made for political ends interferes with a government agency’s psychological warfare against North Korea,” the NIS claimed. The NIS acknowledged the fact that Kim had intentionally made posted comments on the Today’s Humor site as part of the NIS’s psychological warfare against North Korea. “Psychological warfare against North Korea obviously refers to broadcasting messages or sending fliers to the North Korean people,” said a former senior official in the NIS, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Are the people visiting this South Korean website North Koreans? The very idea that the NIS could wage anti-North psychological warfare on South Korean netizens is ridiculous.”“I’m not sure if the role of the NIS has changed recently, but in the past, they didn’t refer to this kind of activity on a South Korean website as psychological warfare against the North. In fact, they didn’t even do this kind of thing at all,” he added.
Even after the NIS’s claims that Kim’s primary assignment had been tracking pro-North Korea posts turned out to be false, the agency offered no explanation about how the posts she wrote about South Korean politics, including criticism of the opposition party and promotion of the government, were related to psychological warfare against the North. “For the NIS to constantly change its position like this betrays the exact psychological traits that a criminal has,” said Pyo Chang-won, former professor at the Korean National Police University and an expert in criminal psychology. “Initially, criminals deny the charges brought against them. But as evidence is brought forth, they admit only those elements to which the evidence corresponds. And then when the full story is revealed, the criminal makes excuses, saying that they hadn’t meant to do that. This is exactly what the NIS is doing right now.” The NIS also responded to the fact that, since August 2012, Kim had clicked like or dislike on as many as 90 separate posts related to the South Korean presidential election. This was “an exercise of a basic, fundamental right that she enjoys as a citizen of South Korea,” the NIS said. “The individual’s freedom of expression must be respected as much as possible,” said a senior judge in a Seoul district court. “However, the NIS has a history of getting involved in politics as an organization and taking action to manipulate events. In light of that history, employees of the NIS should exercise the highest discretion in expressing political opinions, and they must make those judgments according to strict standards.” Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
