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The fact-finding committee of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) on Thursday prioritized seven incidents as part of a comprehensive probe into incidents of past misconduct. They are the Jeongsu Scholarship Foundation case, where a businessman was forced to cede a foundation to Park Chung-hee government (1962); the kidnapping of dissidents from Germany (1967), the kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung (1973), the People's Revolutionary Party incident, where the Park regime used anti-communist laws to execute and imprison demonstrators (1974), the disappearance of former Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) director Kim Hyung-wook (1979), the destruction of KAL 858 (1987), and the South Korea Workers Party Central Region Branch incident (1992). They all had repercussions way into the future and sparked painful controversies in Korea¡¯s contemporary history.
For a national intelligence agency to lay itself open to such a sweeping probe is unprecedented in the world. How one evaluates this monumental task depends on one's viewpoint, and it is true that diverse political interpretations have been offered why this investigation comes now and where its focus lies.
But now that the matter has come this far, it must become an opportunity for the NIS to be reborn, cleansed as it were of its past errors, into the light of public trust. For that to happen, it is necessary that these incidents which for so long have been shrouded in secrecy and surrounded by suspicion are examined transparently.
If the NIS's self-purification is to be faithful to its original intent, it must maintain strict objectivity in the selection of incidents to be probed and the methods of investigation, in the interpretation of evidence and in the way it deals with its findings. Strict political neutrality in the investigation process is the first order of business.
Most of the cases now being investigated have some connection with what is now the opposition to a reform-minded government. That gives rise to fears that political neutrality will not be easy to maintain. If the nation¡¯s recent past is handled politically and ideologically from the point of view of those now in power, or if a sense of victimhood on their part clouds a clear-eyed look into the past, then today's rectification task will itself need future rectification.
That the case of the Jeongsu Scholarship Foundation, as it became, now administered by opposition Grand National Party chairwoman Park Gun-hye, was prioritized over some internal objection, is particularly suspect in this regard. Perhaps the more controversial a case is politically, the later it should in fact be investigated.
The Central Region Branch incident, which the NIS itself said was unlikely to have been manipulated, seems to have been prioritized because of a recent assertion by a ruling party lawmaker that he was tortured. Meanwhile, the destruction of KAL 858, the facts of which can be regarded as having been mostly cleared up, appears to have been included under pressure as much from forces which have persistently attempted to hijack the issue as from the families of victims.
Most of the cases the NIS has picked have been the subject of diverse previous investigations or have been decided in courts of law. The investigation will therefore not be easy and may in some cases, almost incidentally, shake the judicial system to its foundations. There must therefore be no attempt to tweak the essential truth of the cases based on mere suspicion or obstacles the probe may encounter.
In matters involving North Korea's operations in the South, in particular, a finely tuned and delicate approach is essential. The NIS should neither lose sight of its role with regard to North Korea nor hurt the morale of its staff in the service of delving into the past.
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