N. Korea tries to profit from Israel-Hamas war; S. Korea looks for intel blind spots

North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, center, examines a rocket assembly hangar at the Vostochny Cosmodrome outside the city of Tsiolkovsky, in Russia's Far East, Sept. 13. AP-Yonhap

The Israel-Hamas War has become the subject of analysis, as countries, particularly those facing security threats from their neighbors, study the conflict to bolster asymmetric warfare capabilities to defeat their enemies.

South Korea is striving to learn lessons from Israel’s intelligence failure and fix blind spots in its defenses in order to detect and foil a possible Hamas-like attack by North Korea.

North Korea, meanwhile, is trying to profit from the war as it sees the conflict as an opportunity to sell weapons to rogue states and terrorist groups to counter sanctions imposed by the West. The North also revealed its intention of using the conflict as a testing ground for its weapons and tactics, according to the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

Quoting the spy agency, Rep. Yoo Sang-bum of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) said on Wednesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is trying to take advantage of the Israel-Hamas War for multiple purposes.

“We’re told that the NIS had gathered circumstantial evidence that Kim Jong-un had directed his deputies to find out ways to help Palestine with a comprehensive assistance package,” he told reporters after the National Assembly inspection of the NIS.

During the closed-door session, the intelligence agency was quoted as saying that Kim’s “military experimentalism” could be emboldened and assured regarding the capabilities of North Korea’s long-range artillery by the effectiveness of Hamas’ preemptive surprise attacks.

The NIS also raised the possibility that North Korea may attempt to sell weapons to third-world countries as it previously sold anti-tank weapons and rockets to Hamas and Hezbollah, according to the lawmaker.

Game changer

The Israel-Hamas War has become a game-changing event for South Korea as witnessed by the shift in its traditional stance toward geopolitical instability in the Middle East.

Before the war, whenever political turmoil occurred in the region, all eyes were fixed on the fluctuation of global oil prices.

South Korea imports oil, mostly from the Middle East. A rise in oil prices due to political instability deals a blow to the nation's export-reliant economy. Therefore, in the past, South Korea's primary concerns centered on the geopolitical stability of the Middle East.

However, a seismic change has occurred in the way South Korea views Middle Eastern affairs after Hamas’s surprise assaults on Israel on Oct. 7th.

After the Israel-Hamas War, South Korea has grown wary of the possible fallout on its own security stemming from the Middle East crisis.

Like it or not, South Korea has become a stakeholder in the Israel-Hamas War, because North Korea became part of the conflict.

The North sold weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah and helped them improve their military capabilities one way or another by passing their tactics on to the militant groups.

North Korea’s arms sales to radical militant groups and rogue states pose a potential threat to South Korea as the North is expected to use the money it earned from the arms deals to develop more weapons of mass destruction, which in turn will pose a greater security threat to the South.

A glass door bears the logo of the National Intelligence Service at its headquarters in Seoul's southern district of Seocho, Wednesday. Yonhap

Human intelligence

The Israel-Hamas War has alarmed South Korea.

As intelligence experts put it, Israel’s Mossad is one of the best intelligence agencies on the planet. Mossad, however, was blindsided, allowing lots of damage to be inflicted on Israeli civilians in the early days of the war.

According to a media report, the military and intelligence authorities in South Korea have begun to examine, review and find ways to strengthen human intelligence, also known as HUMINT.

“Our intelligence agencies’ capabilities of collecting intelligence were significantly weakened during the previous Moon Jae-in government because of its policy of building peace on the Korean Peninsula,” an unnamed official was quoted as saying.

After the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, the source added that concerns grew inside the government about South Korea’s weakened human intelligence capabilities.

The reaction came amid accusations that an over-reliance on technology by the Israeli espionage agencies was the root cause of their intelligence failure.

Marc Polymeropoulos, who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for 26 years, likened Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel to the U.S.' 9/11.

He said Israel’s over-reliance on technology, such as a border fence and sensors while neglecting human intelligence, made the nation vulnerable to Hamas’s attacks.

Soo Kim, a Policy Practice Area Lead at LMI Consulting and a former CIA analyst, said human intelligence matters and its value will not wane in the digital era.

“HUMINT still plays a critical role in the digital era, no matter how much our dependence on technology has increased over the years,” she said in an email message to The Korea Times. “Physical and verbal interactions, as well as the observations made by human assets cannot be replaced by technology. Not to mention, since there are ways to circumvent detection and intelligence collection in, say, electronic sources, it’s important to approach intelligence collection from a latticed perspective.”

A retired intelligence officer said on condition of anonymity that he agrees that human intelligence is still valuable in the digital era.

“Without supportive human intelligence, it’s difficult to decipher information gathered from signal intelligence,” he told The Korea Times.

Signal intelligence, also known as SIGINT, refers to the gathering of intelligence by intercepting communications between people or from electronic signals not directly used in communication.

The former intelligence officer declined to give a definitive position concerning Israel’s intelligence failure.

“With the given information, I cannot conclude whether the Israelis failed to collect intelligence about Hamas’s attacks or not. In case intelligence officers gathered related intelligence, but policymakers didn’t act on it for some reason, we don’t call a situation like this an intelligence failure. It will be more accurate if we call it a policy failure,” he said. “But again, I have no idea which was the case, so I cannot tell whether it was an intelligence failure or not.”

Bruce Bechtol Jr., a former intelligence officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that weaknesses in human intelligence are a shared concern for South Korea, the United States and Israel.

“Big weakness for Korea and the U.S. is human intelligence,” he said, adding that was the case for Israel, too.

“Because Hamas knows how good Mossad is — Mossad is very good, maybe they didn’t use the internet (when they planned the surprise attacks because their communications can be detected by the Israelis). Maybe they didn’t talk about this on cellphones… maybe everything was in person.”

If this was the case, Bechtol Jr. said the only thing the Israelis could do would be to have someone inside Hamas who could feed them information about what was going on there.

“It’s very obvious Israelis didn’t have that,” he said.

Kim, a former CIA analyst, said intelligence is, in many ways, more of an art form than a science.

“So, a key skill -- one that's more nuanced and perhaps even subjective -- is the ability to read one's adversary. This is more of a mental and perceptual capability than a measurable or mechanical skill,” she said.

People gather to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people and to protest the bombing of the Baptist Hospital and Jabalia Camp in the Gaza Strip, at Parliament Square in Rabat, Morocco, Wednesday. EPA-Yonhap