South Korea is moving to restrain the authority of its intelligence department to curb excessive surveillance practices and extend an olive branch to North Korea.

On Dec. 13, 2020, the National Assembly passed legislation that would have police replace the National Intelligence Service (NIS) in dealing with the North by the end of 2023 at the earliest, touted as a step toward reconciliation.

The intelligence agency has been responsible for counterintelligence on Pyongyang for some 60 years. During that time, it has also earned a reputation for meddling in domestic politics.

Originally called the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), the NIS will see its authority scaled back so it can only collect intelligence on other foreign nations, take countermeasures against cyberattacks and work to prevent terrorism.

Progressive politicians worried about the agency’s domestic political interference see the changes as long overdue. But some in the intelligence community warn it could have unintended consequences on domestic intelligence gathering and security.

“North Korean agents come to the South through Japan, China and other third-party countries,” warned a former senior NIS official. “It would be impossible for organizations other than the NIS to block them.”

A HEAVY-HANDED HISTORY

The KCIA has a checkered past. It was established in 1961 immediately following Park Chung-hee’s military coup. It was comprised of 50 to 60 intelligence officers carefully selected from the South Korean army and navy.

According to Kang In-duk, who was one of those officers--a marine at the time who at one point served as unification minister—the agency’s origin stems from a proposal by Kim Jong-pil, a close aide to Park.

“It would be impossible to devise national strategies amid the current turbulence in the international community without being able to collect and analyze information,” Kim Jong-pil said, according to Kang.

The Park administration was involved in aggressive confrontation with North Korea, and the KCIA fully committed itself to preventing espionage and terrorist activities by Pyongyang.

In 1968, the KCIA detected a planned armed assault against South Korea’s office of the president. It retaliated, according to a former senior NIS official, after the 1983 Rangoon assassination attempt against President Chun Doo-hwan and the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987.

The KCIA also notoriously interfered in domestic politics, cracking down on South Korea’s pro-democracy movement and the government’s political opponents.

It worked to expose scandals about opposition party members and would set up honeypot operations, where politicians would be lured into sexual relationships and agents would take illicit photos and even semen samples to entrap them, according to an ex-KCIA officer.

In August 1973, the agency abducted then-dissident leader Kim Dae-jung during his visit to Japan. An intelligence officer involved in the incident said the KCIA initially planned to kill Kim Dae-jung, in cooperation with a Korean resident in Japan who was a senior member of a crime syndicate, according to KCIA's report on the incident. 

Under the new system, the NIS will continue working as a counterespionage organization to prevent sensitive information from leaking overseas--another area it is known for being zealous about.

The NIS reportedly monitors diplomatic cables and emails sent out of the country by the U.S. Embassy in Seoul and foreign media companies to ensure they are not stealing intelligence from the government.

Even the Moon administration orders its own government personnel to hand in their smart phones, just as its predecessors did, once intelligence leaks are confirmed.

“I was asked about things that had happened several years earlier that I did not remember, even things that were part of my private life,” said a government source who was forced to give up his mobile phone. “Those who refuse to sign the submission agreement will be regarded as culprits, making it impossible to gain promotions.”

CUTTING ESTABLISHED TIES

Many personnel involved in the democratic movement have worked in the administrations of South Korean reformist leaders Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in.

The Roh government had set up a panel to investigate past problems linked to the NIS, while the Moon administration has devoted itself to curtailing the security agency’s authority, such as by reining in its powers to prevent it from gathering dirt on domestic politicians.

The NIS has long played a leading role in maintaining the power of the government of the day, and has long been known to do so in a high-handed manner.

But, its past abuses aside, there is another major motivation behind the push to limit the scope of the agency. Progressive leaders have a much stronger sense of empathy for the North than the country’s conservatives.

The administration of Kim Dae-jung notably reduced staff allocated to affairs involving Pyongyang.

It is a big factor behind Moon’s latest plan to transfer the intelligence service’s ability to investigate and detect covert North Korean programs to the police, sources said.

But some have raised concerns about transferring that responsibility, saying that police intelligence networks outside the country cannot compare with the NIS’s long-established networks.

For example, in 1997, it succeeded in hindering Taiwan’s attempt to send nuclear waste to the North. NIS staff who speak Pashto played an important role in negotiating an end to the South Korean hostage crisis in 2007 in Afghanistan.

“Police and the military’s intelligence section have also engaged in crackdowns of North Korean agents, but the NIS took the initiative in all those campaigns,” the former senior NIS official said. “That is because there is a vast difference in the information collected and intelligence-gathering techniques. The NIS will not hand down its tradecraft to police.”