Remake of spy agency

NIS chief must step down for his boss, nation

Since its birth in the early 1960s, Korea’s national intelligence agency has kept changing its name and image in keeping with the times. What has remained unchanged in the past half-century has been the public’s view of the agency as an organ that works harder for those in power than for the nation as a whole. The incidents of the last few years have only enhanced that conviction.

In 2012, the National Intelligence Service shook the foundation of Korean democracy by meddling with its most important institution ― the election. But NIS leaders got away with the incident largely unscathed, as it occurred during the “previous” administration, although it became clear the incumbent staff, probably including the NIS chief, Nam Jae-joon, were involved in hampering the prosecution’s investigation.

Last year, the spy agency eroded the basis of the nation’s judicial order by fabricating evidence to frame a North Korean defector for espionage. The public prosecutors, perhaps on cue from Cheong Wa Dae, stopped at indicting a couple of mid-level officials Monday.

A deputy NIS director resigned, holding himself accountable for poor management of his men in what has long been compared here to a “lizard that preserves its life by losing its tail.”

Nam, who had not expressed any regrets for the election intervention scandal, issued a public apology Tuesday because the fake-evidence scandal arose while he was in charge of the NIS. He read a statement in a hastily arranged news conference, brushing away reporters’ questions. “I feel really bitter to see the NIS, the backbone of the national security, shaken at this critical moment,” he said. “I sincerely ask for the public to give us one an opportunity be born again.”

But Koreans know there was never a time when the nation’s security was not in crisis, as these officials see it, as well as that the spy agency has never changed despite its numerous pledges of reform made whenever it was beset with one scandal or another.

A real problem is the NIS’ ability to fulfill its proper duty ― espionage against North Korea and other foreign competitors ― has weakened to a lamentable extent while it has indulged in domestic politics. Nothing showed this better than the ongoing evidence-forgery scandal involving a third-rate spy suspect, whom a better intelligence organ might have reused as a double agent or just handled as a petty criminal. Instead, the agency blew up the case by unduly trying to frame him, and being caught red-handed by Chinese immigration offices, losing its face almost beyond recovery for the time being.

President Park Geun-hye appears set to exonerate Nam once again. We don’t know whether it is because of the president’s inclination not to fire her own appointees or because of Park’s desire to keep the NIS and its loyal chief on a short leash.

In any case, Nam and his NIS will continue to be a heavy burden not only on the chief executive but also on the nation and its democracy, unless Park dismisses the spymaster and names a new one who can reinvent the agency from the ground up.

President Park described administrative red tape as a “cancer” that should be removed. A far more dangerous cancer is a politicized and unduly ideological state spy agency. The korea times