Tag: Spies

Here is some more information about the ROK intelligence agent that was leaking the identity of undercover agents in China:

A military intelligence official indicted for allegedly leaking the identities of undercover South Korean agents has admitted to working for a Chinese operative since 2017, military prosecutors said Wednesday. 
  
The 49-year-old official, who worked for the Defense Intelligence Command before his suspension, initially denied leaking military secrets but eventually told investigators that he was recruited by Chinese intelligence in 2017 during a visit to Yanji, the capital of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, to meet his contacts. 
  
According to military prosecutors, the official claimed he was detained by Chinese officials at the Yanji airport and offered a chance to work for a Chinese intelligence agent in exchange for his family’s safety. 
  
Military prosecutors indicted the official on Tuesday on charges of bribery, aiding the enemy and violating the Military Secrets Protection Act by leaking classified information. 
  
While the official said he began selling military secrets in 2017, prosecutors said they were able to confirm he had received payments since 2019 and leaked classified information since June 2022, two years before counterintelligence officials caught wind of his suspicious activities.

Total payments to the suspect that have been tracked thus far by South Korean counterintelligence amount to 160 million won ($120,000). 
  
Prosecutors said the suspect gathered secrets by taking photos and screenshots of information on computer screens at the Defense Intelligence Command’s headquarters in Seoul, which he then uploaded to a Chinese cloud server at home.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but I have to wonder how real the supposed threats to his family were? I would not be surprised if he was looking for money from the start. Considering he only got paid $120,000 he sold out his country for a paltry sum.

ROK authorities need to put this guy away for a very long time to deter anyone else from leaking information like this. Hopefully none of these ROK agents were killed due to these leak:

The defense ministry’s prosecutors’ office on Tuesday indicted a military intelligence official for allegedly leaking information of South Korean espionage agents operating overseas.

The official at the Korea Defense Intelligence Command, whose identity is withheld, was arrested earlier this month on allegations of handing over personal information of “black agents” to a Chinese national of Korean descent, who is possibly an informant for North Korea’s intelligence agency.

The defense ministry said the prosecutors indicted the official on charges of aiding the enemy, bribery and violating the Military Secrets Protection Act, believing that the individual leaked confidential information in exchange for financial gains.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

This is a huge compromise of sensitive information by the NIS. The article doesn’t say how high ranking this civilian employee is, but you would think the list of ROK operatives abroad would be a tightly controlled secret that only a few people would have access to:

A civilian employee in South Korea’s military intelligence command was arrested for allegedly leaking military secrets, the Defense Ministry said, as local media speculated the information was about South Korean spies operating abroad and that it may have been sent to North Korea. A military court issued a warrant Tuesday to arrest the employee in the Korea Defense Intelligence Command for alleged leaks of confidential military information, the Defense Ministry said in a brief statement.

It said it won’t disclose details of the employee’s criminal allegations because an investigation was underway. South Korean media reported the employee gave a Chinese national thousands of confidential documents including those on the intelligence command’s list of agents operating in foreign countries with disguised names and jobs. The reports said the leaked documents have the real names and ages of those secret agents and where they are stationed. It was unclear why the employee allegedly handed over the information to the Chinese.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Not that any American should sell out their country like this, but the agents recruiting these people do not even have to work very hard. Look how cheap this guy was willing to give up information:

An Army soldier accused of selling sensitive information related to U.S. military capabilities has decided to plead guilty, according to federal court documents. Sgt. Korbein Schultz, who was also an intelligence analyst, filed a motion late last week requesting a hearing to change his plea. “Mr. Schultz has decided to change his plea of not guilty to a plea of guilty pursuant to an agreement with the government,” wrote federal public defender Mary Kathryn Harcombe, Schultz’s attorney. (……)

The indictment said that Schultz was initially asked to provide documents detailing lessons that could be learned from Russia’s war with Ukraine and how those lessons could be applied to the U.S. helping Taiwan in the event of an attack. Schultz was paid $200 for that information, which then prompted Conspirator A to ask for a “long-term partnership.”

Conspirator A, who was described in the indictment as a foreign national purporting to reside in Hong Kong, later suggested that Schultz could earn more money if he handed over “internal only” material rather than unclassified documents. In total, Shultz received at least 14 payments totaling $42,000.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but he needs to be jailed for a long time to discourage others from giving up information like this for money.

This looks pretty suspicious:

South Korean police questioned three Chinese students who used a drone to record panoramic views of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt at Busan in June, a Busan Metropolitan Police officer said Thursday. The three were suspected of illegally recording video of the carrier and South Korean Naval Operations Command on June 23 and June 25, the police officer told Stars and Stripes by phone. The students, who police described as being in their 30s or 40s, were questioned and released but remain under investigation, the officer said.

Stars and Stripes

You can read more at the link.

I don’t know why any company withe sensitive technology would hire a Chinese national when China literally has a law that states their citizens must assist with espionage if asked:

A Chinese national who worked for SK hynix is on trial for allegedly stealing key semiconductor technology from the Korean chipmaker for Chinese IT firm Huawei, the latest in a series of chip technology leaks to Chinese firms, according to the police, Tuesday.

The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police said a woman in her 30s, a Chinese national, was sent to prosecutors last month on suspicion of violating the Act on Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology.

The former SK hynix employee was hired by the company in 2013 and worked in the department responsible for analyzing defects in semiconductor designs. From 2020 to 2022, she was involved in consultations with business-to-business client in China, according to the police agency.

The Chinese national returned to Korea in June 2022, and moved to Chinese IT company Huawei the same month. Shortly before leaving the Korean company, she allegedly printed out more than 3,000 sheet of documents related to front-end semiconductor manufacturing technology.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I can’t feel sympathy from anyone from the western aligned world who gets arrested while visiting or living in Russia. It is well known the risks of becoming detained whenever Russia needs a hostage:

The detention of a South Korean national by Russian authorities on espionage allegations has emerged as a significant diplomatic challenge for Seoul, particularly against the backdrop of strained relations between the two nations.

Observers suggest that the detainee could be caught up in Russia’s hostage diplomacy tactics, and anticipate that the situation could drag on for months, if not years. Moreover, this incident could signal a shift in Russia’s stance toward North Korean defectors, particularly considering the detainee’s purported involvement in assisting North Korean workers in the far eastern region of Russia.

Earlier this week, the Russian state-owned media outlet TASS agency reported that a South Korean man named Baek Kwang-soon, aged 53, was apprehended in January on charges of espionage in Vladivostok. He was subsequently transferred to Moscow’s Lefortovo detention facility in February, typically reserved for high-profile political detainees. The Lefortovsky Court has extended his detention until June 15.

This marks the first known case of a South Korean national being arrested on espionage charges in Russia, where such offenses carry penalties of up to 20 years in prison.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service is one of the suspects of who was the overall mastermind of a prostitution ring that specialized in servicing people who work for the government or defense industry:

The two brothels in Virginia (referred to in the affidavit as ‘Target Locations 8 and 9’) were situated in Unit 245 at the Avalon Mosaic in the quiet suburban town of Fairfax and Unit 649 of the nearby Hanover Tysons

Intelligence experts are becoming increasingly convinced that six high end brothels in the suburbs of Boston and Washington, D.C. were set up by a foreign nation as an espionage ‘honeytrap’.

They believe the brothels – allegedly masterminded by a 41-year-old South Korean woman – targeted politicians, high ranking government officials and defense contractors. 

But the mystery is which country was behind the scheme. Russia, China, Korea itself, or even Israel are al seen as possibly being behind the scheme.

‘Having the Koreans out front could have been a false flag to give China or another country plausible deniability if the plot unraveled,’ a one-time CIA senior operations officer told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

Daily Mail

Considering how stupid the people going to this brothel are they probably shouldn’t be working any where near the government:

Aspiring clients had to submit a membership application before they could book an appointment.

Required documentation included government-issued ID, phone and email contacts, employer information and credit card records, according to court records.

Bizarrely, numerous political, military and business officials provided it all without blinking an eye and proceeded to have sex in an apartment that for all they knew was outfitted with equipment to record video and audio footage.

‘Finding idiots like this would be pure gold for an intelligence service running a honeypot,’ said the retired foreign spy. 

A retired CIA senior operations officer was equally flabbergasted. 

‘This is at the level of a Nigerian prince scam,’ she said.

You can read much more at the link, to include a number of pictures of the prostitutes. Judging by the pictures these were some high-end Korean prostitutes working for this ring. Would China be able to recruit this many South Korean women to work for them? It seems more likely that the ROK NIS would be able to pull this off and according to the article ROK intelligence has attempted honeypot operations in the past to collect intelligence. It will be interesting if we will ever hear who was actually behind this honeypot operation.

The real reason this lawmaker wants to take away investigative power from the NIS is probably because of all the spies they have found in organizations supporting the Korean left over the years. With that said he is right that most intelligence agencies had off counterintelligence investigations such as in the U.S. where the FBI will investigate counterintelligence threats:

Since its establishment in 1961 as the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has not only collected intelligence on cases related to North Korea, but also investigated them. Come January, the South’s most important intelligence headquarters will be barred from investigating cases related to North Korea.

Rep. Kim Byung-kee of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, a former high-ranking official at the NIS, says prohibiting the intelligence agency from engaging in law enforcement activities — even those concerning North Korea — was necessary to establish democratic control over its security services.

“The intelligence service has become accustomed to flouting legal boundaries on the pretext of protecting national security, and is nearly free from outside control,” the spy-turned-lawmaker told a recent interview with The Korea Herald.

Taking away investigative functions from the NIS is one of the first steps in “institutionalizing democratic control and accountability” of South Korean intelligence, he said, making the case for the contested law that bars NIS involvement in North Korea-related investigations. A key pledge of the previous President Moon Jae-in administration, the revised law was passed by the Democratic Party of Korea without support from the People Power Party.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but Rep. Byung-kee wants the KNP to do the investigations. These are the guys that could not figure out crowd control before the Itaewon crushing tragedy and now he wants them to investigate North Korea spies?