Prosecutors raided the nation’s intelligence agency Tuesday over allegations it meddled in the December presidential election. A team of 25 prosecutors and investigators confiscated digital files and documents from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) during the raid, the second of its kind after a similar seizure in 2005 over a bugging scandal.
Won Sei-hoon, who led the NIS from February 2009 to this year under the previous Lee Myung-bak administration, was summoned Monday for questioning over his alleged role in the agency’s intervention in domestic politics. Won is suspected of attempting to influence voter sentiment ahead of the presidential poll through in-house intranet instructions to agents.
It’s a national shame the NIS has been raided again for its alleged involvement in politics. The nation also failed to break with the dishonorable tradition of seeing former intelligence chiefs investigated after their retirement for political intervention, secret leaks and other illegal activities while in office.
The key question of the prosecution’s probe is to confirm if there was a systematic operation by the NIS to influence the election. The main opposition Democratic United Party (DUP) argues that high-ranking NIS officials ordered agents to post politically sensitive comments on the Internet to influence public opinion ahead of the election, with some DUP officials likening the agents’ online activities to serious election rigging in 1960 that led to the toppling of then President Syngman Rhee’s autocratic regime.
Won denied the allegations, claiming the agency’s Psychological Intelligence Bureau was doing its job in countering Pyongyang’s attempts to influence public opinion on the Internet. In fact, the two NIS agents, who were charged with violating the spy agency law with their online activities, never mentioned Park Geun-hye, the then ruling party candidate, or her rival Moon Jae-in by name in online comments that were mostly dedicated to defending government policies.
The prosecution’s swift move to get to the bottom of the incident is laudable, given that only 50 days remain before the statute of limitations on any Election Law violation expires on June 9. This is because police dragged their feet in their investigation of the case.
The prosecution must not waver in dealing with the latest scandal, considering it may have been a grave incident that undermined the foundations of the nation. Rather, this could serve as a good occasion for the prosecution, especially its new leader Chae Dong-wook, to be free from the stigma of “political prosecutors.” Nothing is more important than revealing a true picture of the incident.