Through “willful neglect” former spy chief Won Sei-hoon meddled in the 2012 presidential election, the Seoul High Court found in a highly controversial case Monday.
With that, the appellate court overturned a lower ruling that in September had cleared Won of election meddling while finding him guilty of violating the National Intelligence Service (NIS) Law that bans NIS staffers from explicit political activities. The lower court had said Won’s acts were not “purposeful, active and premeditated” to qualify as violation of the Election Law.
The lower court’s narrow interpretation of the Election Law prompted ire among some sectors. The application of the Election Law violation charge had been a source of internal content within the prosecution and with the Justice Ministry in the development of the case. As both Won and the prosecution are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, we hope a concrete ruling on that aspect will soon emerge.
Yet the powerful spy agency would do a disservice to itself and to the country if it did not heed the warning in the ruling. The ruling compels the NIS to focus more on counter espionage against North Korea. It also poses a political burden to the President Park Geun-hye who won her presidency by a narrow margin.
The appellate court studied more of the online posts — 716 Twitter accounts and some 274,000 tweets — to find Won culpable. It found that the posts turned to illegal campaigning after the Aug. 20 selection of President Park Geun-hye as the ruling party candidate.
For the moment, the appellate court’s ruling seems to support the main opposition party, whose presidential candidate and now chairman of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) Moon Jae-in had claimed that the spy agency’s staffers vilified opposition candidates while praising the then-ruling party presidential candidate. President Park denied that the agency’s actions helped her win the presidential election, but later acknowledged that the spy agency should adopt reforms.
In the wake of the ruling, neither Park nor the NPAD chief Moon nor the then sitting President Lee Myung-bak have yet to comment on the ruling, and rightly so as we wait for the highest court’s final say.
In his defense, the former spy master said that the cyber team’s activities were part of psychological warfare against North Korea and Monday said that he thought he was working for the “good of the country.”
In the process, the consensus is that the NIS has one more chance to revamp.
Under past authoritarian regimes, the spy agency, formerly known as the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), had undeniably stood at the fore among law enforcement authorities to function as a political tool for the powerful. The spy agency more than any other party or institution should know what task lies ahead in dealing with the always volatile North Korea, and there is no time to meddle in domestic politics.