“Go get the details of ads in the Kyunghyang Shinmun” NIS agent protested the request from presidential press secretary Lee Dong-kwan’s office

Lee Dong-kwan, senior secretary to the president for public relations at the time, gives a press briefing on the Cheongwadae restructuring at the Cheongwadae press room in 2010. Kyunghyang Shinmun Archives

Prosecutors secured a statement from a National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent, who claimed that when Lee Dong-kwan, special advisor to the president on external cooperation, served as the Cheongwadae press secretary, his office ordered the NIS employee to investigate the trend of advertisement orders of a certain progressive daily newspaper and to seek ways to restrain the ads. According to the statement, the agent strongly opposed asking “Are you going to take the responsibility when this is disclosed?”

According to the prosecutors’ investigation records, evidence, and statements on the illegal investigations by the National Intelligence Service in 2017-2018 that the Kyunghyang Shinmun obtained on July 5, the NIS agent who was dispatched to the Cheongwadae Office of the Senior Secretary for Public Relations told the prosecutors that he received such instructions from an official from the press secretary’s office and protested asking, “Is this a task for the NIS to handle? Are you going to take the responsibility when it is disclosed?”

A, the NIS agent who was assigned to the Cheongwadae press secretary’s office when Lee Dong-kwan was the senior secretary for public relations, appeared before the prosecutors on December 10, 2017 and stated that 80-90% of orders for reports that the NIS received were from the Office of the Press Secretary under the Office of the Senior Secretary for Public Relations, and that he hardly ever received orders from other secretaries. At the time, the press secretary was Park Heung-shin, known as Lee’s confidant.

According to his statement, A strongly protested after receiving instructions from B, an administrative official, to investigate the trend of advertisement orders at a particular progressive daily newspaper and to find ways to restrain them in May 2010. He asked B, “Do you think it’s possible to find out about these things? We’d have to open the desk drawers of the advertisement division director. Is this something that we (NIS) should be doing? If this is disclosed later, are you going to take the responsibility?”

At the strong protest from A, B took a step back. But a few hours later, he came back and said, “I would really like you to carry out our request earlier.” He added, “If you don’t, I will report to the VIP that the NIS is not doing its job properly,” and repeatedly forced A to investigate, according to A’s statement.

A responded, “We will also report that we are stressed because the Office of the Press Secretary keeps requesting actions that are not the job of the NIS and that could put a heavy burden on the VIP as well as the NIS when disclosed.” According to the statement, A explained to the prosecutors that after he protested, the “strange” requests from the press secretary’s office almost disappeared and that a week or two later, an official from the press secretary’s office told him that they had other routes to find out about things.

These facts were also confirmed in a statement by B, the administrative official. When the prosecutor presented A’s statement, B said, “I remember it (the progressive daily newspaper) was the Kyunghyang Shinmun.” The prosecutor asked B the reason why the press secretary’s office made such a request, and B said, “It was also something that the (press) secretary ordered, but I don’t remember the background.” He continued and said, “I assume it was because the Kyunghyang Shinmun was usually critical of the government, and he probably wanted to prepare some action.”

B further stated, “Around the second half of 2009, I first received instructions from the press secretary to find out about certain issues through the (NIS) agent.” He said that he delivered the secretary’s orders to the NIS agent in the hallway or in the smoking area, because there were too many people in the office to talk there. When the prosecutor asked, “Didn’t you deliver the order unofficially because no one else was supposed to know about the instructions from the press secretary?” B answered, “That is also true.”

A said that the intelligence agency prepared 3-4 documents a month upon orders from the Office of the Press Secretary until May 2010, when he refused to carry out the order to investigate advertisements in the Kyunghyang Shinmun. He said, “About 30-40% of the requests were for reports claiming that we had to watch out for the press or people in the media industry with leftist tendencies.” He also said, “They once asked us to investigate a rumor that C, a celebrity, was on propofol, and to investigate the status and ways to control the appearance of leftist journalists in broadcasting.”

In a phone conversation on July 5, former press secretary Park Heung-shin denied all the allegations. He said, “We never did anything related to a blacklist or this leftist thing. It wasn’t our job, either.” The Kyunghyang Shinmun asked Lee Dong-kwan for his position on the issue, but failed to receive an answer.