Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
Yongsan presidential office safer against spying than Cheong Wa Dae: experts
The presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul / Courtesy of presidential office
By Nam Hyun-woo
Experts suspect human intelligence gathering, surveillance of presidential office
By Nam Hyun-woo
Experts said Wednesday it is unlikely that the United States wiretapped Korea's presidential office as part of the country's alleged surveillance of Seoul's high-profile officials, which came to light recently following the online leak of purported Pentagon documents.
They said the circumstances imply that the U.S. has attempted to monitor Korean officials' private communications through various means, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the U.S. has been spying on the presidential office in central Seoul's Yongsan District.
They also dismissed the opposition's claim that the controversy took place because the office, relocated next to a large U.S. military garrison last year, is more vulnerable to surveillance than the former presidential compound Cheong Wa Dae.
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"From the perspective of an engineer, it is hard to say that we can protect someone 100 percent from eavesdropping or wiretapping, so other techniques are added to improve security, such as holding a conversation in a deep underground bunker or controlling people's access to the bunker," said Lim Jong-in, a former presidential special adviser for security and a distinguished professor at Korea University's School of Cybersecurity.
“When it comes to a deep underground bunker, it is nearly impossible to wiretap what is happening inside… Even if there is a bug planted inside the bunker, sending a signal outside the bunker (to a recipient) is a big problem.”
Lim's comments came after the presidential office dismissed allegations that its officials were under surveillance, an allegation raised upon the revelation of purported Pentagon documents leaked online. The documents contain conversations between the former national security director and foreign affairs secretary on how Seoul would handle the U.S.' growing calls to supply ammunition to Ukraine.
The presidential office said the allegations are groundless because the office's security is ironclad, and additional procedures to determine what actually happened are needed.
This was viewed as an apparent attempt to prevent the controversy from affecting President Yoon Suk Yeol's upcoming state visit to the U.S. while countering criticisms from the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea that the Yoon administration is too submissive to the U.S., and that the suspected wiretapping took place because of Yoon's “hasty” relocation of the presidential office despite doubts and worries from the opposition.
“As the U.S. and the Korean governments said, the documents are mixed with facts and disinformation, and it is impossible to know how much trust you can have in them,” Lim said. “I would rather think that what was stated in the documents was an outcome of comprehensive intelligence activities, such as human intelligence gathering, rather than a specific act of wiretapping.”
Lim said it is possible to wiretap unsecured smartphones by intercepting signals when they are operating outside of secured areas. However, this also generates huge costs and requires an actual operative to be standing close to the target. Given the foreign affairs secretary and national security director are high-profile figures, chances are slim for them to be exposed to such an environment while using unsecured phones.
“Most of all, the content of their dialogue is not worth costly spying activities,” the professor said. “The information was at a level that U.S. officials can get right away by consulting with Korean counterparts.”
He added, "Reportedly, the presidential office also sees the possibility that the leaked dialogue could have taken place outside of the presidential compound.”
This May 22, 2022, file photo shows an aerial view of the former presidential compound of Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul. Yonhap
Kim Yeoul-soo, chief security strategy officer at Korea Institute of Military Affairs, said that past precedents and the circumstance of the U.S. not disavowing any spying activities imply that there could have been an attempt to monitor secret dialogues, but noted that the Yongsan presidential office, located in the former Ministry of National of Defense headquarters, is more advanced in terms of countersurveillance compared to Cheong Wa Dae.
“The Ministry of National Defense has long been paying greater attention to countering wiretapping on its (former) headquarters,” Kim said. “On the other hand, Cheong Wa Dae has been serving as the presidential office for a long period of time, thus allowing other countries' intelligence agencies to develop more ways to break into its security systems.”
Kim cited the case of changing all windows of buildings in the Cheong Wa Dae compound in the 1970s, to counter eavesdropping attempts that involved intercepting radio signals via external radio device transmissions directed at those windows.
The Korean presidential office has since then been using transparent piezoelectric film speakers for windows that employ a function for active noise mitigation to prevent eavesdropping, but sources said such a method is considered outdated among intelligence services.
Shin Jong-woo, a senior researcher at the Korea Defense and Security Forum, also said the Yongsan presidential office is safer than Cheong Wa Dae, because most of the key security facilities are located underground.
“If the (former) Ministry of National Defense building was breached, no place in Korea is safe from surveillance attempts,” Shin said.
“The most advanced security technologies are concentrated in the building, and if the building was breached all public organizations in the country can be breached, and I see only a very slim possibility of that.”