In South Korea, Spy Agency Is the Leaker

 

European Pressphoto Agency

In October 2007, then South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, on the right, talks to the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang while heading to a meeting room for a rare inter-Korean summit.

 

As Edward Snowden knows better than anyone, intelligence agencies are usually tasked with keeping, rather than divulging, secrets. But the National Intelligence Service, South Korea’s spy agency, has triggered an unholy political row after disclosing a classified transcript of the 2007 inter-Korean summit.

 

For months, ruling conservative New Frontier Party lawmakers have been on the warpath over allegations that former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun agreed with then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il at the meeting to revise the western sea border, known as the Northern Limit Line.

 

Pyongyang has long rejected the maritime border, which was drawn up in the closing days of the Korean War by the United Nations command. The border has been the site of a series of bloody clashes between the two Koreas in 1999, 2002 and 2009.

 

On Tuesday, major South Korean media published the full transcript of the 2007 dialogue between Mr. Roh and Mr. Kim after it was provided by the NIS.

 

During the closed-door summit in Pyongyang on Oct. 3, 2007, Mr. Roh said he “shared the same perception” with Mr. Kim, who suggested both Koreas should create “a joint fishing area” or “a peace zone” around the NLL in the Yellow Sea.

 

But the transcript also shows that throughout the 131-minute dialogue, Mr. Roh made no clear remarks indicating that Seoul should give up the NLL. He even noted how controversial any discussion of a possible revision would be in the South.

 

Dissection of the transcript is likely to continue but opposition lawmakers are calling foul over the move by the NIS to release the transcript at a time when the spy agency is under fire for allegedly meddling in the December presidential poll that elected conservative Park Geun-hye.

 

Former NIS chief Won Sei-hoon has been indicted by state prosecutors on charges that NIS agents launched illegal online smear campaigns against Moon Jae-in, the liberal candidate and a confidant of Mr. Roh. The spy agency is also facing a parliamentary probe.

 

In response to a call by opposition lawmakers for the probe into the NIS, ruling party lawmakers have demanded that it should also look into the issue of Mr. Roh’s remarks made during the 2007 summit.

 

The NIS said it decided to declassify the entire transcript because both the ruling and the opposition parties demanded its full disclosure after the release last week of the transcript summary to parliament’s intelligence committee fueled controversy over the NLL exchange at the summit.

 

Opposition lawmakers claim the NIS — in collaboration with the ruling party and possibly the presidential office — may have decided to declassify the transcript to deflect growing criticism from the public targeting the spy agency.

 

Former South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung, who accompanied Mr. Roh to Pyongyang for the 2007 summit, said the late South Korean leader never offered to give up the NLL and the NIS disclosure of the classified summit transcript was neither legal nor helpful to the national interest.

 

“The disclosure will bring hugely negative influences to future talks between the two Koreas, which will never trust each other during dialogue,” Mr. Lee told Seoul’s Yonhap news agency.

 

Pyongyang demands that the sea border be re-established further south. Seoul officially rejects the North Korean demand.

 

 

http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2013/06/25/in-south-korea-spy-agency-is-the-leaker/?KEYWORDS=leaker