Education for Espionage

Education is often touted as a powerful weapon against poverty, but apparently in South Korea it is a tool for espionage.

Mr. Lee, a former professor who taught political science at an unnamed South Korean university, has been charged with spying for North Korea. While attending a university in India in 1992, Lee was allegedly approached by a North Korean agent and agreed to spy for the Norks. In addition to having been a professor, Lee was also a former military officer, an adviser to the presidential National Unification Advisory Council and at the government-run Education Center for Unification. Lee gave confidential information, including the locations of key South Korean military facilities and an army operations manual – all of this stored on discs, computers and portable drives that he delivered to his North Korea handler while traveling in China, Cambodia, Singapore, and Thailand. He was even able to secretly travel to North Korea in 1994 and join the North Korean Workers’ Party. You can read the article here.

But he is not the only educated officer in trouble.

Earlier this month, a former South Korean General, identified only as Kim, was arrested on suspected espionage for the Swedish defence and aviation company Saab. According to Yonhap, Kim used his enrolment in a university graduate course to access classified information in the library at the Korea National Defense University. Kim is alleged to have photographed documents and used them to write detailed reports in English and delivered them to Saab officials between August 2008-May 2009. These documents pertained to Korea’s multimillion-dollar KF-X stealth fighter development program. Naturally Saab denies any wrongdoing. 

It seems almost ironic considering that an article in Flightglobal in 2007 claimed that Saabs presentations to Korea’s Agency for Defence Development “focused on possibly technology transfer.” I bet the South Koreans were thinking the transfer of technology was going to come from Sweden and not the other way around. Defense News has an excellent article on the incident here.

Of course these are not the only incidents of university positions being used as cover. 

In 1996 Chung Soo-il – a.k.a. Muhammad Kansu of the Philippines was arrested for spying for North Korea. He was a professor at Dankook University where he taught Arabic Studies. His history is indeed interesting and unfortunately all of the links about this spy are no longer operative except the excellent blogging of Kalaniosullivan at Kunsan. – make sure you read his material. In 2000, as part of Korea’s celebration of Liberation from Japan, Chung and 3,585 other inmates were granted amnesty.

Koh Young-bok, a prominent professor at Seoul National University and known as the “founder of sociology” in Korea, was arrested as a spy in 1995. Five others were arrested with him, including a married couple from North Korea. Not that this has anything to do with the professor but the woman killed herself with a capsule of cyanide gas – according to the article: ”She was taken to a bathroom escorted by a female investigator. While trying to wash herself she suddenly took out the capsule from deep inside her…” Read the article if you want to find out what “deep inside” really means.