How to neutralize the nation’s spy agency

We must ask for whom the party is seeking the revision.

The Democratic Party (DP) which forced the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to hand over the authority to investigate domestic spies to the police now wants to strip the agency of all investigative power in security-related crimes. The move can destabilize the top spy agency against expansive physical and asymmetric threats from North Korea.

Seventeen DP members have embarked on revising the NIS Act to lessen the infringement on civilian rights. The keystone of the bill is to strip the NIS of its investigative rights and vetting. The party wants to disallow other agencies from cooperating with the NIS for fact inquiries and material sharing for intelligence related to crimes of domestic insurrection and foreign aggression when deemed necessary.

Instead, the DP will add a provision prohibiting NIS officials from conducting positive vetting. In other words, the nation’s top spy agency won’t be able to access and check the backgrounds of candidates for senior government posts of grade three or higher. Among the 17 petitioners of the bill, 11 had been student activists who fought the military regime. Some of them had been prosecuted for breaking the National Security Act and the Act on Assembly and Demonstration. Their move only can raise suspicion of taking revenge for the hardships they suffered in the past.

As the governing party in December 2020, the DP railroaded the controversial revision to the NIS Act to force the anti-spy agency to surrender its power to investigate domestic spies to the police. The act took effect from last January after a three-year grace period. As it turned out, however, the police’s counter-espionage activities have become dysfunctional due to a critical lack of infrastructure and know-how on counter-espionage activities. Many had warned that such investigations, which require well-built connections overseas as well as at home, would be beyond police capacity.

Since defining South Korea and North Korea as “two hostile states at war” in January, the North has pushed tensions to new heights. It has flaunted advanced missile and nuclear capabilities as well as dispatching thousands of trash-laden balloons to the South and reinforcing cyberattacks and the spread of fake news. But the opposition is eager to help North Korea by further debilitating the intelligence command.

The DP had caused a serious security hole through its reckless revision of the act in 2020. It may end up opening the crater wide through the additional amendment it can coerce based on its majority status. We must ask for whom the party is seeking the revision. President Yoon Suk Yeol, who had stressed “responsible historical, national and security perspectives” at a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Korea Freedom Federation, must veto the bill should it pass the legislature.