And to think I was beginning to wonder what NIS spooks did with their time since they got out of the counterespionage/torturing dissidents racket. Courtesy AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A South Korean man who met with John Kerry’s fund-raisers to discuss creating a new political group for Korean-Americans was an intelligence agent for his country, raising concerns among some U.S. officials that either he or his government may have tried to influence this fall’s election.
South Korean officials and U.S. officials told The Associated Press that Chung Byung-Man, a consular officer in Los Angeles, actually worked for South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
A spokesman for the South Korean consulate office said Chung was sent home in May amid “speculation” he became involved with the Kerry campaign and Democratic Party through contacts with fund-raiser Rick Yi and that his identity couldn’t be discussed further.
“According to international tradition, we cannot identify, we cannot say who he is, because he is intelligence people,” spokesman Min Ryu said.
The State Department said it has discussed Chung’s reported activities with the South Korean government and has no reason to doubt Seoul’s representations he was an intelligence agent.
The department believes Chung’s contacts with donors and fund-raisers, if accurately described in reports, were “inconsistent” with the 1963 Vienna Convention that prohibits visiting foreign officials from interfering in the internal politics and affairs of host countries, a spokesman for its legal affairs office said.
Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton said the campaign did not know Chung was an intelligence agent or that Yi, one of the campaign’s key fund-raisers in the Asian-American community, was meeting with him until it was brought to light by the AP.
The AP first reported this spring that Yi and other Kerry fund-raisers and donors had met with Chung, but at the time Chung was only identified as a diplomat. Yi resigned from the Kerry campaign after the story, and Kerry returned $4,000 in donations he had solicited because of concerns about their origins.
AP was alerted to the meetings and Chung’s identity as an intelligence agent by Democratic donors and fund-raisers who said they were uncomfortable with the activities.
A South Korean government official in Seoul and two longtime U.S. officials in Washington, both speaking on condition of anonymity because Chung’s intelligence work is classified, told AP that Chung worked for South Korea’s NIS, the country’s CIA equivalent.
The U.S. officials said Chung had registered with the Justice Department as a friendly foreign intelligence agent on U.S. soil, and that his activities had raised concern he or his government had tried to influence the fall presidential election through “extracurricular activities.”
Like when this story (minus Chung’s intelligence connections) broke back in June, I won’t use it to take cheap shots at Kerry. His folk did the right thing by returning the money once they found out where it came from. What this does raise questions about, however, is whether the Roh administration is trying to play games with the U.S. elections in November:
The NIS dismissed any suggestion the South Korean government tried to influence American politics as a “totally groundless rumor and all fiction.”
South Korea has been frustrated over the deadlock in talks on North Korea’s nuclear activities, while at the same facing the Bush administration’s planned withdrawal of thousands of U.S. troops from the tense region. One expert said Chung’s actions were consistent with Seoul’s concerns with the Bush administration even if he didn’t get a direct order.
“It is certainly possible that these actions would not reflect an order from the top but rather point to the unaccountability of a rather high-ranking officer to pursue their own agenda or what they perceive to be the agenda of their superiors,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute.
“But, nonetheless, this sort of intervention certainly provides a faithful reflection of the general attitude of Roh Moo-hyun’s administration toward the presidential race,” Eberstadt said. “There’s an awful lot of people in this (South Korean) government who can’t stand the Bush administration and would love to see Bush lose.”
Hmmm…
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[...] ps he does have integrity. Filed under: Politics - US aestar @ 12:53 pm In this article, it appears that a member of the South Korean Nat [...]
You’d think people would get it by now. Taking sides in a foreign country’s internal politics is bad news. If your favored side wins, they still have to look out for their own country’s interests. If the other side wins, they regard you with disfavor. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless your support is sufficiently crucial that your favored side is highly dependent on you.
Messing with another country’s elections? There is a certain irony in the US government getting pissed off about that, considering how often it (through the CIA or NED) has messed with other country’s elections (let’s not mention coups).
As Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)described it a year ago, “the misnamed National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is nothing more than a costly program that takes US taxpayer funds to promote favored politicians and political parties abroad. What the NED does in foreign countries would be rightly illegal in the United States.”
The most recent target was the Venezuelan referendum, and before that, the coup attempt against Hugo Chavez in 2002. The New York Times reported on April 24, 2002 that the NED had funnelled more than $877,000 into Venezuela opposition groups in the weeks and months before coup attempt.
AP reported Aug 19th of this year that Sumate, a Venezuelan group that helped organize the recall initiative, had received a $53,400 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy.
Well, the irony makes me chuckle… If they could interfere with the US election the way the US does abroad, how many countries would be throwing money at the candidate opposing Bush?
makhno — As I said in my post back in June when this story broke, I’m mature enough to understand that even among allies, games like this get played. The key is not getting caught. This is where the the anger comes in. Not only was he caught, but Chung did what he did in such an open and, quite frankly, clumsy way that it could be taken as an insult, both to the U.S. and the capabilities of South Korean intelligence (assuming he was acting on orders, which is not really clear in this case). Now, the U.S. has intervened in S. Korean politics in the past, and for all I know, it may be intervening now, but imagine for a moment the reactions of both the Korean government and Korean public if U.S. Embassy personnel — regardless of whether they were CIA or not — had been caught meeting with Lee Hoi-chang’s people during the 2002 S. Korean presidential campaign and trying to funnel cash to the GNP.
Another factor to take into consideration here is the ethnic component. Being a multi-ethnic society, the U.S. is going to react sensitively if it thinks another nation is trying to turn its co-ethnics living in the U.S. into some sort of fifth column. WWII proved this sensitivety — mixed with outright racism — could be taken to disgusting extremes, as in the case with Japanese-Americans. That being said, most multi-ethnic societies would react sensitively to something like this — witness the case of Koreans residing in Japan, and I’m sure the Koreans would behave similarly if they had an ethnic Chinese community to speak of. Now, I know some might point out that in the U.S. case, the sensitivity is especially pointed toward Asian immigrants (the Chinese in particular), while Israeli intelligence games don’t seem to provoke the same kinds of feelings toward American Jews. Why that is, I don’t really know; if I had to guess, I’d say both racism, recognition that ethnic nationalism runs strong in East Asia, contemporary politics, and (well-founded) guilt over Western anti-Semitism all play a part, although I’m not a sociologist, so I’m not really in a position to say.
I have learnt that the NIS is conducting espionage in London also, though not of the political variety. The fact that I heard about it does suggest that they can indeed be a bit clumsy on occasion.
Perhaps he does have integrity.
In this article, it appears that a member of the South Korean National Intelligence Service was trying to meet with Kerry to assist with obtaining the Korean-American vote. With the news that this Korean Intel agent was broken, the key campaign fund-r…
Marmot’s arguement about the perception of an ethnic “fifth-column” is spot on right. Koreans dont seem to get this concept, and this annoys us to no end. Just look at the support for Robert Kim.
Marmot - Korea isnt a multi-ethnic society (and I dont think theyll ever be one) because they are awfully racist compared to the US or any other Western society. My favorite illustration of this undeniable fact is how non-Koreans are almost completely shut out of the upper levels of Korea’s businesses, universities, journalism, or any other institution. Maybe the one exception is the legendary Mr. Underwood, who founded an educational institution better than anything the Koreans could create themselves. Meanwhile, back in the USA, if a Korean is discriminated against, he or she can raise hell with lawsuits, civil rights complaints, public relations campaign, a sympathetic media, and so on.
Koreans in the USA will always be treated better than an American in Korea.
I’m calling dibs on the superficial Koreagate comparison. (see also Moon, Unification Church, influence-peddling)
And people wonder why the CCP gets irate when South Korea attempts to pull a similar (but more dangerous) stunt in Northeast China.
Just read that Kerry might not reduce the number of troops in Korea if elected- any connection??????
Eyes on Korea: 2004-09-29
NK Options; ROK in Iraq; S. Koreans helping N. Koreans produce nerve gas, S. Korean intellectual criticizes biased and unobjective U.S. understanding of N. Korea, S. Korean spooks for Kerry, N. Korean pressure cookers, the Great S. Korean prostitution …
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