The defense ministry said Monday four counterintelligence agents have been arrested in connection with hacking a university professor's e-mail account, but investigators said the agents were not under orders from their superiors.
The four arrested include a sergeant major surnamed Han, a sergeant first class named Jang and a civilian agent Kim, all of whom are based at a Defense Security Command unit in Gwangju, some 330 kilometers south of Seoul. The fourth suspect is another civilian agent surnamed Han, who operates in Seoul.
Kim and the two non-commissioned officers were arrested earlier this month, while Han, the civilian agent, was arrested earlier Monday, the ministry said.
The civilian Han, of no relation to the sergeant major of that name, is charged with aiding Kim and Jang to hack into the professor's account. The sergeant major was arrested for telling Kim to look into the professor's e-mails. The ministry said the hacking took place on three occasions between Aug. 29 and Sept. 2.
According to the ministry, the professor, who teaches at Gwangju's Chosun University, was once arrested for violating national security law. He had been lecturing at the Army's Infantry School near Gwangju for several years and counterintelligence agents in the area grew concerned the professor might possibly leak confidential military information when he came in close contact with colonels at the school.
The ministry said the arrested agents went overboard with their activities.
"Sgt. Maj. Han asked a colleague to do basic information collection, but others got involved in what later became illegal activities," the ministry said in a statement. "Those activities resulted in excessive collection of information."
According to the ministry, Sgt. Maj. Han became particularly concerned about the professor's connection with senior officers after some retired military officers were indicted this year in separate cases on charges of leaking classified military information to foreign arms manufacturers.
The ministry said the civilian Han first stole the professor's user name and password for his school's portal site and passed them to Kim and Jang, who then logged on to the site and downloaded nearly 700 documents.
Kwon Tae-seok, head of investigations at the ministry's inspection bureau, said he'd found no evidence that the four agents were following orders from their superiors.
"We thoroughly investigated all related documents and electronic systems, as well as the testimonies of all related individuals," Kwon told reporters. "We confirmed that there was no connection between these four and their superiors or others in the upper echelon."
Kwon said counterintelligence agents reserve the right to run background checks on suspicious individuals "within the boundaries of the law" but, in this case, the agents violated the law related to communication and information protection.
Kwon said the agents were also accused of attempting to destroy evidence. Kim and Jang deleted their e-mail accounts that were used to send hacking software to the professor. The civilian Han reformatted his notebook computer and also altered his mobile phone. (Yonhap)