|
The prosecution on Friday arrested five members of a spy ring consisting mostly of ex-student activists, dubbed Ilshimhoe, for violating the National Security Law. Among the new facts revealed, prosecutors said, were that it consisted of several chapters including one in charge of propagating the North¡¯s Songun or military-first policy. It also passed information on 344 Democratic Labor Party officials and party minutes to the North, and reported on the movements of the Uri and Grand National Parties. Prior to the APEC summit in November last year, members allegedly received instructions to wage a concerted anti-American struggle timed with President George W. Bush's Korea visit.
Public attention has been focused on one thing since the National Intelligence Service officially initiated the investigation on Oct. 24. Given that the five arrested in the scandal were former student activists of the so-called 386 generation, were the 386ers closer to the center of power clean? The question arises from the commonsense assumption that well-funded and organized spies with plenty of personal contacts would not waste their time worrying away at a marginal opposition party but go where the decisions are made.
But if the prosecutors¡¯ findings are to be believed, the masterminds were no great shakes in the mind-department. Despite having formed various sub-organizations, they are said to have reported party movements as they read about them in the papers. They apparently didn't even attempt to access their abundant contacts, even though many of their former comrades now work in Cheong Wa Dae, not least in the National Security Council and as core members in administrative agencies, or are influential officials in the ruling party. And yet the incompetence and laziness of these spies somehow netted them various decorations from the North Korean regime. What's more, not a single additional suspect was uncovered in two weeks of NIS investigation and nearly a month of a prosecution probe.
When the NIS launched the probe under its former chief, Kim Seung-kyu, it unearthed the spy ring¡¯s coded reports and the secret location in China where they met North Korean agents. Since Kim's resignation, however, nothing further has been heard from the authorities about what investigations they conducted and whom they investigated. Only some 30 defense lawyers who came and went at the investigation agencies leaked what the suspected spies told them. Was Ilsimhoe really as amateurish as the prosecution would have us believe? Why would Kim, before quitting, describe the activities of such clowns as ¡°shocking¡±? Common sense is being stretched to breaking point.
|
