Text Fwd: Why did the NIS do nothing about information leakage in Shanghai?

Director of NIS Won Se-hoon. Serious questions are raised as to why NIS agents in Shanghai did not act to prevent information leakage scandal in Shanghai. File photo taken on April 13, 2010, at the National Assembly by Kim Chang-kil. Caption by Seol Wontai, Editor of Online English Edition

Kyunghyang
Why did the NIS do nothing about information leakage in Shanghai?
Posted on : 2011-03-11 14:59

The government ministries such as the Ministry of Justice(MOJ), the Ministry of Knowledge and Economy, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which respectively dispatched consuls to Shanghai, suffer from lambastes from the public opinion with regards to the so-called 'Shanghai scandal.' It is natural that they should.

By the way, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), which is directly related to this incident by definition, does not have anything to say. The INS, which is charged with the national intelligence matters, merely looks at this matter just as it does a fire across the river.

One of the major missions for the NIS agents dispatched to embassies in foreign countries is to prevent our information from being leaked outside. This means that NIS agents must examine with whom Korean diplomats have contacts and take precautionary measures if there is any possibility of diplomats' leaking security information.

It was in May 2005 that the Chinese woman in question named Deng Shinming met a consul dispatched by the MOJ for the first time. Afterwards Deng played with a multiplicity of Korean consuls and elicited a variety of information.

Love affairs by diplomats are a representative reason that Korean information leaked. If the NIS had coped with these deviations with caution, then it might have fended off leakage of information with more ease. It should be said that the NIS totally closed its eyes on this matter.

The NIS had made a decisive mistake since the latter half of last year, when the scandal came to the fore internally. At that time, the NIS should have identified who Deng was and what were leaked after the infidelities of consuls were made public.

Aren't these the most basic job that the NIS should carry out? In spite of all this, the government has not yet secured Deng's identity and what leaked materials are and is allegedly planning to request cooperation from the Chinese police belatedly. It is never an exaggeration to say that the Korean government incurred international disgrace due to the indolence of NIS.

The relaxation of disciplines for the overseas NIS agents reached a worrisome level. Last April a high-ranking NIS agent in Washington D.C. was found in a decadent massage parlor by the local police. And an NIS agent at the German embassy got involved in a drunken driving accident in downtown Berlin and was summoned back to Korea.

This does not end the list. The NIS incurred criticisms that it is inferior to a private detective agency by causing a clumsy break-in incident into the hotel rooms for Indonesian emissaries to Korea at the beginning of this year. The people's distrust of the NIS is indescribable.

This case exhibits where the NIS is presently situated in a naked manner. This case again shows the real face of the NIS, which does not carry out its originally given missions dutifully and gets itself involved in unmentionable matters such as inspection over civilians. The NIS must have a sense of crisis about its self-identity and should have a thorough soul-searching for its future. (Ed. Mar 11, 2011)