SEOUL, South Korea — The scandal shaking up South Korea’s main spy agency is not cloak-and-dagger stuff, but the kind of low-grade trickery anyone with an Internet connection could pull off. And the target was not Seoul’s opaque rival to the north, but the country’s own people.
Internet postings ostensibly from ordinary South Koreans, but actually from National Intelligence Service agents, allegedly boosted President Park Geun-hye while she was running for the job as the ruling party’s nominee. She was reportedly dubbed “the best,” while her opponent, in a play on his name, was called “criminal.”
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A police investigation conducted before the December election found no wrongdoing, but now police say at least two agents violated the law and the original investigation is itself being examined.
Dozens of Internet comments, or more, may not have affected an election that Park won by a million votes, but they have damaged public trust in a spy agency that already had a dubious record.
The agency was founded in 1961 by Park’s father, longtime dictator Park Chung-hee. Agents detained, tortured and even allegedly killed his political opponents. After Park was killed in 1979 — by his spy chief, ironically enough — other abuses occurred under his successors.
In recent years, however, criticism of the NIS has centered on what it has failed to do — namely, come up with much intelligence about North Korea. It learned about Kim Jong Il’s death in December 2011 two days after it occurred, when Pyongyang’s state TV announced it.
The Internet comments scandal captured headlines in South Korean media late last month, when state prosecutors summoned the agency’s former director, Won Sei-hoon, and raided its Seoul headquarters. Reports recalled the unfortunate fates of predecessors who ended up being arrested, imprisoned or even killed.
“The prosecution will mobilize all its capabilities to swiftly and thoroughly get the truth of the case,” Prosecutor-general Chae Dong-Wook said in a meeting with top prosecution officials Tuesday, according to his office. “This case should be investigated in a way not to have any lingering suspicion.”
The scandal flared about one week before the Dec. 19 election. Liberal opposition members camped outside the apartment of an NIS officer allegedly involved in illicit online campaigning, based on a tip from another agent. The officer locked herself in the apartment for two days, then came out — wearing a mask and a baseball cap to conceal her identity — to let police confiscate her computers.
The incident triggered a last-minute election debate over whether the NIS illegally engaged in politics, or whether the opposition party harassed an innocent woman.
Three days before the election, police announced the results of their initial investigation by clearing the officer of any wrongdoing, giving Park’s camp a source of criticism on her main rival, Democratic Party candidate Moon Jae-in.
Kwon Eun Hee, a police officer who headed the initial investigation, recently told The Associated Press and other media that her bosses inappropriately interfered in the probe by pressing her team to drastically decrease the number of search words they would use in analyzing the NIS officer’s computer hard disk, in an apparent effort to announce the investigation results before the presidential election.
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