[Editorial] Now time for an investigation into how the NIS rigged the election

Won Sei-hoon was taken into custody after an appeals court found him guilty of violating the Public Official Election Act and the National Intelligence Service Act. During his tenure as director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), Won mobilized the agency to make posts on social media that supported certain candidates in the 2012 presidential election, and criticized others.

The appeals court‘s ruling is noteworthy since it convicted Won of violating the Public Official Election Act, a charge that had been dismissed by the lower court. In a word, the South Korean judiciary has acknowledged that a state institution interfered in the 2012 presidential election.

Considering the scope of the NIS’s online activities that have come to light thus far, the court was entirely justified in its decision.

The ruling reached by the lower court was contradictory. Won had ordered the NIS’s psychological warfare division to write posts online supporting specific political parties and politicians and opposing others, the court acknowledged, and this constituted political activity, which is forbidden by the National Intelligence Service Act. However, the evidence did not show this online activity to have been calculated and aggressive enough to regard it as election campaigning, the lower court said.

However, the appeals court drew attention to the close connection between the content and the timing of the online posts and political developments in South Korea. For example, after Aug. 20, 2012, when Park Geun-hye was confirmed as the presidential candidate for the Saenuri Party (NFP), there was a sharp increase in posts criticizing opposition candidates. This connection in and of itself constituted election campaigning, the court found.

Aside from the legal issues, there were also significant differences in how the two rulings assessed the facts. The lower court only admitted 175 NIS Twitter accounts and around 110,000 tweets as evidence in the case, but the appeals court increased this total to 716 Twitter accounts and 274,800 tweets. That is to say, the appeals court understood the NIS’s social media activities to have been a wider-ranging and more organized operation. This activity, it can be inferred, was extensive enough to have influenced the outcome of the election itself.

This case has now taken on far too much significance to be simply regarded as a matter of online comments. A more accurate way to frame the issue is as the NIS rigging the election.

This can no longer be seen as aberrant and anachronistic behavior by the NIS director and a few agents, who were trying to meddle in politics. The court has concluded that this was a much more serious crime: the distortion of the process by which voters make political decisions, which is to say, an election.

In the words of the appeals court, there is no avoiding the “fundamental criticism that representative democracy has been damaged.”

Consequently, the political legitimacy of the Park administration is now open to debate. While it would be impossible to calculate the exact extent to which the NIS’s online operations affected the results of the election, it is clear that the procedural legitimacy of the electoral process - which is the basic source of democratic power - has been shaken. In order to prevent the chaos that could ensue and to restore public faith in democracy, it is necessary to thoroughly investigate how the NIS rigged the election.

Up to this point, the prosecutors have had their hands full just tracking down the minimum evidence needed to make the charges stick, in the teeth of obstruction - both implied and overt - from the Blue House and the NIS.

There are a number of questions that must still be asked, however. What was Won’s motive for committing these crimes? Was Park aware of this during her candidacy?

If Park has a clear conscience, she should have no reason to stonewall such an investigation.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]