KOREA: Spy agency's illegal eavesdropping under probe

National Intelligence Service will investigate taped discussion between business executive and print daily resident acquired by MBC journalist

The Korea Times
Thursday, July 21, 2005
 
By Lee Jin-woo

Seoul -- The nation’s spy agency said Thursday it will investigate illegal eavesdropping cases allegedly committed during the President Kim Young-sam administration of the 1990s.

The Agency for National Security Planning, predecessor of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), allegedly recorded private meetings of politicians, executives of conglomerates and senior journalists between 1993 and 1998, local vernacular daily the Chosun Ilbo reported.

Former agents of the spy agency said a special group of four agents with the code name "Mirim" and their informers at expensive restaurants, bars and hotels generated thousands of tape recordings and reports, according to the report.

The NIS subsequently issued a statement, expressing its willingness to investigate the case and reveal the truth to the public.

"We regret the suspicion as we have been trying hard to unearth previous misdeeds of the agency to win the confidence of the public," the agency said.

Former agents said the special team was dissolved soon after Kim Dae-jung was elected president in the 1997 election, according to reports. As a retired agent let out the tapes in 1998, some tapes had been secretly circulated for about a year until the agency found and seized them again in 1999.

Yesterday’s Chosun Ilbo report was initially based on an audiotape called "MBC Lee Sang-ho X-File." Lee, a MBC reporter, reportedly acquired it from a former agent during his trips to the U.S. between last December and January this year.

Before his departure for the U.S., Lee posted a message on his personal Web site, saying, "What I am going to do is to stab a spear of morality into the heart of capital."

The controversial tape contained a recording of a secret 90-minute discussion between an executive of a major Korean company, who was also a close aide of the group’s chairman, and the president of a vernacular daily, discussing a plot to help a certain candidate three months ahead of the presidential election at a hotel in Seoul, the reports said.

However, MBC failed to air the report during its news program last night as a Seoul court partially accepted a request filed by former and incumbent executives of Samsung Group.

Hong Seok-hyun, South Korean ambassador to the U.S., who was formerly president of a vernacular daily, the JoongAng Ilbo, and Lee Hak-soo, vice chairman of Samsung Group’s corporate restructuring office, called for provisional disposition of the program. They claimed the MBC report was based on an illegally recorded tape.

MBC said it would consider filing a lawsuit against Samsung.

"In the tape, two people’s names were not clearly mentioned, but their names were written in a report to top officials of the agency," another former agent, who was familiar with the secret espionage activity, was quoted as saying by the Chosun Ilbo.

Date Posted: 7/21/2005