ISIS as South Korean spy agency's new English name?
National Intelligence Service / Korea Times file
By Park Si-soo
South Korea’s spy agency is pushing forward its self-developed reform plan to wipe out all the misdeeds and malpractices under the two previous administrations.
The comprehensive reform plan includes changing the agency’s 18-year-old name -- National Intelligence Service (NIS) -- in a symbolic gesture to break with its humiliating, scandal-ridden past.
The name will be changed to reflect the new functions and missions the agency will be assigned.
Intense debate over the reform is under way in political circles. An idea gaining bipartisan support is bolstering the agency’s collection of foreign intelligence while scaling down domestic operations to head off its notorious interference in local politics. And this will surely set the tone and atmosphere of the NIS’s new name.
The NIS recently unveiled its tentative new name in Korean. And it has instantly drawn jeers and ridicule, particularly among English-savvy people, because of its English abbreviation: ISIS.
Here, the ISIS refers to International Security Intelligence Service (ISIS). And there is no doubt the abbreviation reminds many of the infamous terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which is widely called ISIS.
But the NIS said “nothing has been decided yet” on the English name.