Calhoun: The NPS Institutional Archive DSpace Repository
Theses and Dissertations 1. Thesis and Dissertation Collection, all items
2019-09 NORTH KOREA, THE LEFT, AND THE RIGHT: FREEDOMS RESTRICTIONS IN SOUTH KOREA
Park, Grace Y.
Monterey, CA; Naval Postgraduate School http://hdl.handle.net/10945/63491
Downloaded from NPS Archive: Calhoun
NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL
MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA
THESIS
NORTH KOREA, THE LEFT, AND THE RIGHT: FREEDOMS RESTRICTIONS IN SOUTH KOREA
by
Grace Y. Park
September 2019
Thesis Advisor: Robert J. Weiner Second Reader: Cristiana Matei Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited. THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Form Approved OMB REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE No. 0704-0188 Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instruction, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington, VA 22202-4302, and to the Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project (0704-0188) Washington, DC 20503. 1. AGENCY USE ONLY 2. REPORT DATE 3. REPORT TYPE AND DATES COVERED (Leave blank) September 2019 Master’s thesis 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5. FUNDING NUMBERS NORTH KOREA, THE LEFT, AND THE RIGHT: FREEDOMS RESTRICTIONS IN SOUTH KOREA 6. AUTHOR(S) Grace Y. Park 7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 8. PERFORMING Naval Postgraduate School ORGANIZATION REPORT Monterey, CA 93943-5000 NUMBER 9. SPONSORING / MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND 10. SPONSORING / ADDRESS(ES) MONITORING AGENCY N/A REPORT NUMBER 11. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES The views expressed in this thesis are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government. 12a. DISTRIBUTION / AVAILABILITY STATEMENT 12b. DISTRIBUTION CODE Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited. A 13. ABSTRACT (maximum 200 words) How has the existence of North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) reduced freedoms in democratic South Korea (Republic of Korea)? Exploring what effect the North has had on freedoms in the South post-democratization, and the association between the threat from North Korea, whether the left or right is in power, and the degree of freedom restrictions in South Korea, is useful for better understanding the ROK’s domestic and security policies. This thesis explores how the existence of North Korea has reduced freedoms, using South Korean presidential administrations as case studies. During the ROK’s authoritarian period, the regime used the genuine and contrived national security threat of North Korea to justify severe curtailment of freedoms for the purpose of maintaining political power. After democratization, restrictions in freedoms related to North Korea overall are consistently higher under conservative administrations and lower under progressive administrations due to how the legacy of authoritarianism interacts with the genuine North Korean threat and the right versus left. However, freedoms restrictions due to North Korea occur under both conservative and progressive administrations. Conservatives cite the North Korean threat as justification for freedoms curtailment, while progressives restrict freedoms in order to foster an environment conducive to positive engagement with the North.
14. SUBJECT TERMS 15. NUMBER OF North Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, South Korea, Republic of Korea, PAGES freedom, civil liberty, political rights, national security, intelligence, intelligence 139 effectiveness, intelligence transparency, intelligence accountability, legacy of 16. PRICE CODE authoritarianism, democratic consolidation 17. SECURITY 18. SECURITY 19. SECURITY 20. LIMITATION OF CLASSIFICATION OF CLASSIFICATION OF THIS CLASSIFICATION OF ABSTRACT REPORT PAGE ABSTRACT Unclassified Unclassified Unclassified UU NSN 7540-01-280-5500 Standard Form 298 (Rev. 2-89) Prescribed by ANSI Std. 239-18
i THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
ii Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.
NORTH KOREA, THE LEFT, AND THE RIGHT: FREEDOMS RESTRICTIONS IN SOUTH KOREA
Grace Y. Park Captain, United States Air Force BA, Government and Politics, University of Maryland College Park, 2013 BA, Japanese, University of Maryland College Park, 2013
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS IN SECURITY STUDIES (FAR EAST, SOUTHEAST ASIA, THE PACIFIC)
from the
NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL September 2019
Approved by: Robert J. Weiner Advisor
Cristiana Matei Second Reader
Afshon P. Ostovar Associate Chair for Research Department of National Security Affairs
iii THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
iv ABSTRACT
How has the existence of North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) reduced freedoms in democratic South Korea (Republic of Korea)? Exploring what effect the North has had on freedoms in the South post-democratization, and the association between the threat from North Korea, whether the left or right is in power, and the degree of freedom restrictions in South Korea, is useful for better understanding the ROK’s domestic and security policies. This thesis explores how the existence of North Korea has reduced freedoms, using South Korean presidential administrations as case studies. During the ROK’s authoritarian period, the regime used the genuine and contrived national security threat of North Korea to justify severe curtailment of freedoms for the purpose of maintaining political power. After democratization, restrictions in freedoms related to North Korea overall are consistently higher under conservative administrations and lower under progressive administrations due to how the legacy of authoritarianism interacts with the genuine North Korean threat and the right versus left. However, freedoms restrictions due to North Korea occur under both conservative and progressive administrations. Conservatives cite the North Korean threat as justification for freedoms curtailment, while progressives restrict freedoms in order to foster an environment conducive to positive engagement with the North.
v THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION...... 1 A. MAJOR RESEARCH QUESTION...... 1 B. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH QUESTION ...... 3 C. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 6 1. The Nature of the North Korean Threat: Genuine, Exaggerated, Fabricated ...... 6 2. Degree of Restriction of Freedoms ...... 10 3. Intelligence Reform in New Democracies ...... 12 D. POTENTIAL EXPLANATIONS AND HYPOTHESES ...... 15 E. RESEARCH DESIGN ...... 17 F. THESIS OVERVIEW ...... 18
II. THE AUTHORITARIAN PERIOD ...... 21 A. INTRODUCTION...... 21 B. GENUINE EXISTENTIAL CONCERNS ...... 21 C. FALSE NARRATIVE: OVERVIEW ...... 25
III. CONSERVATIVE ADMINISTRATIONS IN DEMOCRATIC SOUTH KOREA ...... 37 A. INTRODUCTION...... 37 B. ROH TAE-WOO ADMINISTRATION (FEBRUARY 1988– FEBRUARY 1993) ...... 37 C. THE “NEW RIGHT”: CONSERVATIVE ADMINISTRATIONS FOLLOWING THE DECADE OF PROGRESSIVE RULE ...... 44 1. Lee Myung-Bak Administration (February 2008– February 2013) ...... 47 2. Park Geun-hye Administration (February 2013–March 2017) ...... 64
IV. AMALGAM: KIM YOUNG-SAM ADMINISTRATION (FEBRUARY 1993–FEBRUARY 1998) ...... 77
V. PROGRESSIVE ADMINISTRATIONS IN DEMOCRATIC SOUTH KOREA ...... 85 A. INTRODUCTION...... 85 B. KIM DAE-JUNG ADMINISTRATION (FEBRUARY 1998– FEBRUARY 2003) ...... 86 vii C. ROH MOO-HYUN ADMINISTRATION (FEBRUARY 2003– FEBRUARY 2008) ...... 89 D. MOON JAE-IN ADMINISTRATION (MAY 2017–PRESENT) ...... 93 E. CONCLUSION ...... 101
VI. CONCLUSION ...... 103
LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 107
INITIAL DISTRIBUTION LIST ...... 121
viii LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Indictments under the National Security Law, 1985–2012 ...... 36
Figure 2. RSF’s World Press Freedom Index Rankings, South Korea (2013– 2018) ...... 100
ix THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
x LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. DPRK Provocations under Noh Moo-hyun vs. Lee Myung-bak ...... 54
Table 2. Beyond Parallel Dataset ...... 75
Table 3. DPRK Provocations by Administration ...... 76
xi THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
xii LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
ANSP Agency for National Security Planning
DSC Defense Security Command
DSSC Defense Security Support Command
DJP Democratic Justice Party
DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
GNP Grand National Party
ICT information and communications technology
JIC Joint Interrogation Center
KBS Korea Broadcasting Service
KCIA Korea Central Intelligence Agency
KCSC Korea Communications Standard Commission
KCC Korea Communications Commission
KMT Kuomintang
MOU Ministry of Unification
MBC Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation
NHRCK National Human Rights Commission of Korea
NIS National Intelligence Service
NPA National Police Agency
NSL National Security Law
RSF Reporters Sans Frontieres
ROK Republic of Korea
SOF Special Operations Forces
xiii SCNR Supreme Council for National Reconstruction
SPO Supreme Prosecutor’s Office
TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission
UN United Nations
UPP United Progressive Party
US United States
YTN Yonhap Television Network
xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am very grateful to my advisor, Dr. Robert J. Weiner, for his warm support and guidance. I appreciated his invaluable suggestions and solutions to challenges I faced, which enabled me to organize my data in an accessible way and utilize it effectively toward testing my hypotheses. I am also highly fortunate to have had a subject-matter expert in an area with limited scholarship as my second reader; I would like to thank Dr. Cris Matei for her continued support and insight on the tendencies of intelligence in newer democracies. It has been an amazing experience being in an environment in which my colleagues span services and professions and double as great friends. To my friends—thank you for making the Naval Postgraduate School the most enjoyable duty station of my career. To my professors—thank you for imparting your vast knowledge. You have taught me so much, and sharpened my ability to think critically vis-à-vis political science and national security affairs in the process. To my family—I am always thankful for your unconditional love and support, without which I would not be where I am today.
xv THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
xvi I. INTRODUCTION
A. MAJOR RESEARCH QUESTION
How has the existence of North Korea reduced freedoms in democratic South Korea? This thesis will examine the ways in which North Korea is used to restrict freedoms in South Korea and attempt to explain why this pattern has emerged in democratic South Korea, along with why the curtailment of freedoms is stronger at some times and weaker at others.
The Korean peninsula was partitioned into two states following the Second World War, with the Soviet Union propping up a communist regime in the North, and the United States attempting to establish a liberal democracy in the South. As a result of their involuntary separation and ideological differences, North and South Korea have a unique adversarial relationship: both states recognize there to be one Korean ethno-nationality and lay claim to the Korean nation and have sought to delegitimize each other and unify Korea under their respective governments.1 With this legitimacy contest as a backdrop, the ROK government has put in place legislation and engaged in practices that undercut freedoms, citing North Korea as justification.
Anti-communist ideology became a central feature of the ROK as a response to the salience of the North Korean threat.2 The very real nature of the threat became apparent when North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950 in an attempt to absorb the South and unify the peninsula. Until the 1980s, the North had a relatively strong economy, communist patrons, and “a greater deal of [political] consolidation” than South Korea, which struggled economically and politically. During this time, North Korea engaged in violent
1 Victor Cha, The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013), 21–22, 45–58. 2 Steven Denney and Christopher Green, “Righter Than You Think: National Security Conservatism and Moon Jae-in,” SinoNK, April 03, 2018, https://sinonk.com/2018/04/03/righter-than-you-think-national- security-conservatism-and-moon-jae-in/.
1 provocations toward and infiltration attempts into the South.3 Even after the ROK secured international, economic, and political legitimacy and the North became an impoverished pariah state,4 North Korea remained the ROK’s foremost national security concern due to its formidable unconventional special operations, biological and chemical, and nuclear capabilities.5
For the vast majority of the period from 1945–1987, South Korea was governed by authoritarian regimes. During this time, anti-communist and anti-North Korean rhetoric and laws, restrictions on political rights and civil liberties, and repression of political opposition were widespread.6 South Korea underwent top-down reform and transitioned to democracy in 1987, and has since striven to consolidate its democracy.7 Nevertheless, democratic South Korea continues to restrict certain freedoms, often citing national security concerns.8 There have, however, been fluctuations in the degree of North Korea- related restrictions that appear to correspond to whether the left (historically, the political opposition) or right (historically, the ruling party linked to the regime) is in power, with
3 Joungwon Kim, Divided Korea: The Politics of Development, 1945–1972 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 332; Cha, “The Best Days” in The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future. 4 Brad Glosserman and Scott Snyder, “South Korea’s Growing Confidence” in The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 60–92; “OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) welcomes Korean membership,” OECD, Accessed September 5, 2018, http://www.oecd.org/korea/ oecddevelopmentassistancecommitteedacwelcomeskoreanmembership.htm; Cha, “Five Bad Decisions” in The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future. 5 Andrew Scobell and John Sanford, “North Korea’s Military Threat: Pyongyang’s Conventional Forces, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Ballistic Missiles,” Strategic Studies Institute. 6 Carter J. Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1900,” in Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson, and Edward W. Wagner, Korea Old and New: A History (Harvard University Press, 1990). 7 Hahm Chaibong, “South Korea’s Miraculous Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 19, no. 3 (July 2008), 128–142. 8 Stephan Haggard and Jong-Sung You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 45, no. 1 (2015): 167–179, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/ 00472336.2014.947310.
2 restrictions referencing North Korea being significantly higher under conservative administrations.9
B. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH QUESTION
The question of how North Korea has impacted freedoms in South Korea is a multilayered one that deals with both North-South relations and political divisions within South Korea. When considering the dynamics of the relationship between North and South, it is interesting to consider the role the existential threat of North Korea played historically in the establishment of South Korea’s authoritarian government, the continuation of authoritarianism, and the transition from repressive authoritarian regime to democracy with increased freedoms. Exploring what effect the North has had on freedoms in the South post-democratization, and the association between the threat from North Korea, whether the left or right is in power, and the degree of political rights and freedom restrictions in South Korea, is useful for better understanding the ROK’s domestic and security policies.
The history and nature of political divisions in South Korea add another dimension to this question. In South Korean politics, right-wing administrations are associated with hawkishness towards North Korea—and therefore a greater emphasis on intelligence effectiveness when weighing effectiveness against accountability 10 —while left-wing administrations are associated with dovishness and a greater emphasis on intelligence accountability over effectiveness. The interplay between political leanings and intelligence policies extends beyond ideological preferences, however; it is complicated by a legacy common in consolidating democracies—that of authoritarianism and the framework within which its regimes operated to justify restrictions on freedoms and maintain power. Autocrats drew on the prominence of the North Korean threat when implementing limitations on freedoms and linked all political opposition to pro-North, communist
9 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea.” 10 Matei and Brunei discuss how democracies face a “fundamental and unavoidable dilemma”: democratic accountability is contingent upon transparency, but intelligence effectiveness necessitates secrecy (603). Florina C. Matei and Thomas Bruneau, “Intelligence reform in new democracies: factors supporting or arresting progress,” Democratization 18, no. 3 (June 2011), 602–630.
3 proclivities, often drawing upon the intelligence apparatus to brutally repress the left.11 The narrative portraying progressives as national security liabilities vis-à-vis North Korea carried over into the democratic era,12 as did an “imperial presidency”13 and a strong and direct link between the executive and the intelligence apparatus.14
This being the case, the ROK government’s calculus on how to balance liberty with national security extends beyond taking into account the degree to which North Korea acts as a legitimate threat. The recognition that North Korea has served as a useful pretext for conservatives to consolidate and maintain power while repressing progressives appears to be an additional consideration that impacts both the left and right’s policy approaches. Delving into all of the aspects of how the existence of North Korea affects freedoms in the ROK will provide academics with an interest in the Korean peninsula, along with U.S. government officials working with ROK counterparts, important context on factors driving ROK government actions with implications for national security and liberty. Without appropriate context, it is easy to draw incomplete or inaccurate conclusions regarding these actions; a progressive administration’s emphasis on liberty may simply be understood to reflect an ideological preference inimical to national security, while a conservative administration’s limiting freedoms may simply be seen as a necessary measure to preserve security, for instance. This thesis recognizes that there is indeed an inherent tension between national security and liberty, with conservatives in the ROK showing a preference for the former and progressives favoring the latter, but considers it problematic to attribute these preferences wholesale to ideology alone.
11 Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1900” in Korea Old and New: A History 12 Jon Moran, “South Korea” in PSI Handbook of Global Security and Intelligence: National Approaches, Volume 1, The Americas and Asia, ed. Stuart Farson, Peter Gill, Mark Phythian, and Shlomo Shpiro (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008). 13 Myung-bok Bae, “Tackling the Imperial Presidency: The Case for Constitutional Amendment,” Global Asia 12, no. 2 (2017), 25. 14 Hyesoo Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 31, no. 3 (September 2018), 454–455.
4 This is particularly relevant at present, with President Moon, a progressive, directing reforms of the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office (SPO), the National Police Agency (NPA), and the National Intelligence Service (NIS). Moon stated in February 2019 that these organizations have a history of being coopted to abuse power, and that he is not restructuring them due to “political motivations,” but in order to “firmly uphold the values of a democratic republic.”15 Under Moon, the NIS began undergoing reform in 2017 and the Defense Security Command was dismantled in 2018 following revelations they engaged in power abuses (in the case of the NIS, a domestic psyops campaign to paint progressive politicians, including Moon, to be pro-North sympathizers) under prior conservative administrations.16 Both of these intelligence organizations were divested of authorities the current administration linked to the propensity for intelligence politicization and ability to perpetuate political rights and civil liberty abuses.17
Beyond concerns specific to the domestic and security politics of South Korea, exploring how the existence of North Korea has impacted freedoms within the ROK provides broader insight on how an existential national security threat (in its legitimate, perceived, and fabricated forms) might increase a society’s tolerance for and be leveraged to create support for restrictions on freedoms. It additionally provides a case study for the comparative literature on the interplay between intelligence and democracy—in particular, regarding the challenges newly democratic states face in moving past vestiges of authoritarianism and balancing intelligence transparency with effectiveness in order to become consolidated rather than backsliding democracies.
15 “Message from President Moon Jaae-in on Law Enforcement Reform,” The Republic of Korea Cheong Wa Dae, last modified February 15, 2019, http://english1.president.go.kr/BriefingSpeeches/ Speeches/121. 16 “Moon says military will never again be used for political gains,” August 14, 2018, Yonhap News Agency, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20180814004151315; Tae-gyu Kim, “NIS to abolish office for domestic intelligence collection as part of its reform,” July 27, 2017, Hankyoreh, http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/804586.html. 17 “Moon says military will never again be used for political gains”; “Message from President Moon Jae-In to the Staff of the National Intelligence Service,” The Republic of Korea Cheong Wa Dae, last modified July 20, 2018, http://english1.president.go.kr/BriefingSpeeches/ Speeches/55. 5 C. LITERATURE REVIEW
While there are no sources that focus specifically on how the existence of North Korea has reduced freedoms in South Korea, there is literature on North-South relations, the history of authoritarianism in South Korea, ROK domestic politics, and the intelligence apparatus that discuss data and trends relevant to this topic. The most pertinent themes in the literature are broken down as follows: the nature of the North Korean threat, degrees of restrictions, and intelligence in new democracies.
1. The Nature of the North Korean Threat: Genuine, Exaggerated, Fabricated
Academics who focus on North Korea are in agreement that North Korea has posed an authentic existential threat to South Korea since its inception to the present day. They observe that North Korea had the upper-hand economically until the 1970s, politically until the 1980s, and appeared to be the stronger contender in the legitimacy contest between North and South over the claim to ownership over the peninsula and the ethno-Korean nationality.18 Cha states that during North Korea’s “best days,” it was confident enough in its performance relative to the South that this led it to engage in a series of flagrant provocations ranging from initiating the Korean War to multiple assassination attempts of South Korean presidents. Cha and Lankov note that North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung expressed his belief that the South Korean government lacked domestic legitimacy, that communists abounded in the South, and that much of the South Korean populace would welcome North Korean rule in private conversations; in fact, as Lankov points out, Kim provided this rationale to Stalin prior to invading the South in 1950.19
Despite its decline in legitimacy relative to the South in the 1980s, North Korea analysts and U.S. military strategists agree that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) remains a prominent threat to the ROK. Cha and Scobell and Sanford write that
18 Cha, “The Best Days”; Kim, Divided Korea: The Politics of Development, 1945–1972. 19Andrei Lankov, The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015
6 North Korea’s conventional forces, while antiquated, are so numerous and in such close proximity to Seoul that they are capable of destroying the capital and remain a serious concern.20 On top of this, Cha, Scobell and Sanford, and Mceachern highlight the threat that North Korea’s unconventional capabilities, encompassing Special Operations Forces (SOF), biological and chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons, pose. 21 Historians focusing on the Korean peninsula and South Korea have more varied views on the authenticity of the North Korean threat. Like Cha and Lankov, Oberdorfer observes that Kim Il-Sung was extremely confident in the North’s position relative to the South, but notes that the South was overtaking the North economically when Kim made such remarks in the late 1970s.22 He adds the caveat that while Kim “claimed that North Korean communists had been behind the student revolution that overthrew the regime of Syngman Rhee [the first president of the ROK] in 1960,” this was “contrary to existing evidence and belief in the South.”23 Snyder provides data showing South Korea’s gross domestic product beginning to overtake the North’s in the mid-1970s, but writes that the weakness of the South when compared to the North made “the prospect of unification on South Korean terms…unimaginable” as of the early 1970s.24 MacDonald discusses the salience of the threat of there being agents and co-optees of the North in the ROK, noting, “the north Koreans have launched thousands of infiltration operations against the south since 1945…some of these are detected and many probably are not.”25
20 Cha, “The Best Days”; Scobell and Sanford, “North Korea’s Military Threat: Pyongyang’s Conventional Forces, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Ballistic Missiles.” 21 Cha, “The Best Days”; Scobell and Sanford, “North Korea’s Military Threat: Pyongyang’s Conventional Forces, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Ballistic Missiles”; “Former North Korea Analyst [Patrick Mcearchen] Discusses Country’s Intelligence Operation,” NPR, May 29, 2018, http://libproxy.nps.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/2046485054?accountid=12702. 22 Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History New ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 64, 99. 23 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, 99. 24 Scott Snyder, South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 238–9. 25 Donald Stone MacDonald, The Koreans: Contemporary Politics and Society Third Edition (Colorado: Westview Press, 1996). 7 Many scholars writing on authoritarian South Korea focus on how the North Korean threat was falsely levied by authoritarian regimes against political opponents and dissidents without discussing the legitimacy of the North Korean threat. For example, Oberdorfer and Easy and McCormack point to U.S. State Department and military intelligence assessments that ran counter to South Korean autocrat Park Chung-hee’s claims of a heightened threat of infiltration and invasion from the North as evidence that Park falsely relied upon an immaterial threat in order to justify repression. While the data is compelling, it is possible that the conclusion is, in a sense, myopic. It is conceivable that the regime fabricated claims of impending North Korean acts of aggression and incidents of political dissidents acting as agents of the North but also perceived there to be a legitimate existential threat from North Korea which political opposition exacerbated by virtue of their destabilizing impact, regardless of whether or not the opposition was actually North Korea affiliated. Oberdorfer and Cumings point to the fear of U.S. military abandonment as triggering increasingly repressive measures under Park, who was in power from 1960–1979.26 While the emphasis here is on what impact the U.S. had on freedoms in the South, fear of U.S. abandonment is necessarily linked to concerns regarding the North Korea threat. Snyder makes this connection when he states, “South Korea had no choice but to rely on its security alliance with the United States as the main factor that provided security against a relatively more powerful North Korea.”27
It is useful to consider what the nature of the North Korean threat actually was when ROK administrations did or did not curtail freedoms for several different reasons: 1) If the threat was fabricated when freedoms were restricted, this indicates subversion of liberal values, a political agenda, and intelligence politicization. 2) If the threat was genuine, but freedoms were not restricted, this may also indicate a political agenda and intelligence politicization; an alternative would be ideological commitment to liberty over security. 3) If the threat was genuine and freedoms were restricted, to what degree were they restricted? Was the degree of restrictions proportionate to the threat? If not, what drove
26 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History; Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History 1st ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 359. 27 Snyder, South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers, 238. 8 restrictions to be more or less severe, and are there notable differences in how the left versus right handles freedoms restrictions when the threat is authentic? Eckert and Kraft reference the staggering number of National Security Law (NSL) indictments during the authoritarian period when discussing how the regime falsely portrayed political opposition as having ties to the North.28 It is important to note that there is a question as to how many national security related indictments involved legitimate support of North Korea versus fabrications; it is not possible to ascertain that higher numbers are, without a doubt, attributable to political opposition being used as scapegoats (versus there happening to be a higher number of individuals actually suspected of supporting North Korea).
There is a degree of opacity in obtaining an accurate picture of how much of a national security risk North Korea actually posed during the authoritarian period, and over- generalizations regarding the nature of the threat is pervasive in South Korean politics and government. South Korean politics tends toward polarization, with significantly different narratives of history and approaches towards national security depending on whether a progressive or conservative is in power. The narrative on the left emphasizes human rights and freedoms abuses that occurred at the hands of conservative regimes who fabricated the North Korea threat. In this view, authoritarian regimes used national security as a pretext to undermine democratic forces and stay in power, and legislation, policies, and organizations that look to national security as justification for curtailing freedoms are dangerous because they can easily be coopted to silence political dissidents under false pretenses. The narrative on the right emphasizes that North Korea is a serious threat. This view attributes autocrat Park Chung-hee’s heavy-handed tactics to his recognition that a strong state was needed to ward off the North and grow the economy (while crediting him with wanting to pursue democracy as the end goal after stabilization and economic modernization), and largely mistrusts the left as being national security liabilities who are
28 Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1900”; Diane Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World,” Wisconsin International Law Journal 24, no. 2 (2006): 631, https://uknowledge.uky.edu/law_facpub.
9 too close to North Korea for comfort.29 Nevertheless, while there is no way to know the breakdown of genuine versus fabricated incidents of North Korea-related national security violations during this period, following democratization, investigations initiated by progressive administrations into accusations of national security violations that occurred under authoritarian regimes found prominent cases to have been fabrications, and many confessions to have been induced under torture and coercion.30
2. Degree of Restriction of Freedoms
In democratic South Korea, the existence of North Korea is the primary rationale for restrictions in political rights, civil liberties, internet use, and the press. These restrictions have manifested in the form of legislation, policies, and punitive actions. The most prominent law that is restrictive in all four categories of freedoms is the National Security Law (NSL), which was passed soon after the foundation of the ROK with North Korea in mind, and used and abused extensively throughout the authoritarian period.31 Other legislation includes the 2016 Anti-Terror Law, which permitted wiretapping and specifically referenced the North Korea threat. 32 Restrictive policies have included
29 More generally, these clashing narratives are visible in rhetoric used by politicians on the left versus right; contestation took on a more tangible form when President Park Geun-hye mandated that privately published history textbooks, which her administration criticized as exhibiting bias favoring the left, be replaced with state-produced texts. For more details, refer to: Sang-Hun Choe, “South Korea Scraps Park Geun-hye’s Contentious Textbook Policy,” New York Times, December 27, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/27/world/asia/south-korea-textbook-park-geun-hye.html; and Freedom in the World 2018: South Korea, Freedom House, Accessed March 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/ report/freedom-world/2018/south-korea. 30 Paul Hanley, “Transitional Justice in South Korea: One Country’s Restless Search for Truth and Reconciliation,” University of Pennsylvania East Asia Law Review 9, no. 2 (2014); “Executions still smart 30 years after,” Chosun Ilbo, April 8, 2005, http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2005/04/08/ 2005040861025.html. 31 Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1900”; Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World.” 32 “Freedom in the World 2017: South Korea,” Freedom House, Accessed March 25, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2017/south-korea.
10 internet censorship and removal of posts supporting North Korea 33 and expanding authorities of intelligence organizations. 34 Punitive actions have taken the form of electoral interference35 and blacklisting of progressive artists critical of the government.36 These restrictions are reflected in Freedom House consistently ranking South Korea’s civil liberties as a “2” on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being best and 7 being worst, and political rights being ranked “2” for a majority of the years Freedom House has monitored the country (Freedom House reports on South Korea began in 1998).
With regard to data showing the number of NSL indictments in democratic South Korea to have been significantly higher under conservative administrations,37 watchdog organizations Freedom House and Amnesty International have provided additional context indicating that the NSL was more loosely interpreted under conservative administrations, restricting freedom of thought and speech to a much more stringent degree than under progressive administrations, with actions such as the distribution of Marxist literature warranting prosecution.38 Additionally, combining the observations of Ha-young Choi, Jong-sung You, and Hyesoo Seo, executive and intelligence power abuses incorporating the theme of political dissidents being North Korean sympathizers have occurred under every conservative administration in the history of the ROK;39 on the other hand, it is a non sequitur for progressive administrations to attempt to use this narrative, because it was
33 “Freedom on the Net 2017: South Korea Country Profile,” Freedom House, Accessed March 25, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2016/south-korea. 34 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 467. 35 Kim, “NIS to abolish office for domestic intelligence collection as part of its reform.” 36 Sang-Hun Choe, “South Korea’s Blacklist of artists Adds to Outrage Over Presidential Scandal,” New York Times, January 12, 2017. 37 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea.” 38 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018 South Korea Profile”; “South Korea: National Security Law continues to restrict freedom of expression,” Amnesty International Public Statement, January 20, 2015, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/212000/asa250012015en.pdf. 39 Ha-young Choi, “The North Korean Wind and South Korean Elections,” NK News, April 14, 2016, https://www.nknews.org/2016/04/the-north-korean-wind-and-south-korean-elections/; Jong-sung You, “The Cheonan Incident and the Declining Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” Asia Perspective 39 (2015), 204; Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 455–60.
11 one that was specifically formulated for levying against the left. There have been incidents where politicians on the left, in reaction to being the targets of this narrative, have pursued prosecution of their critics under South Korean laws on criminal defamation, libel, and slander,40 but progressive administrations have not used the conflation narrative itself to curtail freedoms.
It should be noted that Seo observes that intelligence abuses have occurred under both conservative and progressive administrations, while Haggard and You state that administrations on the left and right have engaged in politically motivated freedom restrictions.41 This thesis, however, will examine only those restrictions that reference North Korea; within these parameters, the literature shows there to be a trend of increased civil liberty restrictions under conservative administrations; for instance, allegations of NSL violations and indictments spiked under the conservative administrations of Lee Myung-Bak and Park Geun-Hye from 2008 - 2017.42 “The number of people indicted for NSL violations increased from 34 in 2006 and 2007 [under Roh] to 91 in 2011 and 74 in 2012 [under Lee].”43
3. Intelligence Reform in New Democracies
Literature on the relationship between intelligence and democracy discusses how an increased emphasis on national security tends towards curtailment of freedoms.44 The
40 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea.” 41 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform”; Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 45, no. 1. 42 “South Korea: National Security Law continues to restrict freedom of expression,” Amnesty International Public Statement, January 20, 2015, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/212000/ asa250012015en.pdf; Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2017: South Korea Country Profile”; Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018” South Korea Profile.” 43 Haggard and You, 172. 44 Matei and Bruneau, “Intelligence reform in new democracies: factors supporting or arresting progress,” Democratization 18, no. 3; Matei and Bruneau, “Policymakers and Intelligence Reform in the New Democracies,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 24 no. 4 (2011), 656– 691.
12 literature on intelligence reform in newer democracies includes case studies ranging from states facing a prominent national security threat to states without any real national security concerns. Matei and Bruneau compare six countries with a history of power abuses facilitated through the intelligence apparatus, and observe that all six countries sought to increase transparency when implementing democratic intelligence reform in order “to prevent a return to the past.”45 They also observe that four of these states additionally focused on intelligence effectiveness, and attribute this to the following factors: external incentives, awareness of threats, prestige, and crises.
Phillips explores the case of Taiwan, which is the most analogous to South Korea in terms of the nature of the threat that it faces. Communist China is an existential threat to Taiwan; China claims Taiwan to be part of China’s territory, and does not recognize Taiwan as a separate country.46 Just as the authoritarian regimes in South Korea stifled political opposition by using the North Korea threat, the Kuomintang (KMT) repressed political dissidents by accusing them of being pro-China communists. However, while in South Korea, there was a strong opposition movement and corresponding parties on the left whose core identity was linked to being the main target of repression and fighting against the regime, Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) party had no real contenders. Phillips notes that “the scars of authoritarian rule are not as deep as might exist in other democratizing regimes” in Taiwan, and that the authoritarian period lacked a widespread opposition movement. He suggests that this, combined with the threat of China, has led to democratic intelligence reforms that continue to emphasize effectiveness rather than fixate on transparency. In contrast, Bruneau discusses how in a state like Brazil, in which the authoritarian regime used intelligence to brutally repress the opposition, and which lacked national security threats post-democratization, a distrust of intelligence led the democratic
45 Matei and Bruneau, “Policymakers and Intelligence Reform in the New Democracies,” 686. 46 Steven E. Phillips, “Taiwan’s Intelligence Reform in an Age of Democratization” in Reforming Intelligence: Obstacles to Democratic Control and Effectiveness 1st ed., ed. Thomas C. Bruneau and Steven C. Boraz (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007).
13 government to focus intelligence reform on transparency while disregarding effectiveness.47
In the case of South Korea, there was a highly repressive, conservative regime that targeted the robust political opposition movement on the left by indiscriminately affiliating dissidents with the North Korea threat. Due to top-down democratization, South Korea’s conservatives in government from 1987 onward were the ideological descendants of the authoritarian regime, while the progressives were the ideological descendants of political dissidents and the pro-democracy movement that opposed and was suppressed by the authoritarian government. Given the relatively recent nature of Korea’s democracy, every administration post-democratization has been led by and contained individuals who were directly impacted by the dynamics of the authoritarian period. This legacy has led to mixed results in intelligence reforms, with both left and right overall maintaining certain national security restrictions on freedoms, but with the left tending to emphasize accountability over effectiveness and vice versa for the right.
Matei and Bruneau discuss the inherent tension between intelligence, with its effectiveness often being contingent upon secrecy, and democratic values, which demand transparency for the sake of accountability. They note that vestiges of authoritarianism can act as a hindrance for new democracies attempting to reform intelligence; two ways in which this occurs is through the old guard continuing to abuse the intelligence apparatus for political purposes, and as a result of the former opposition mistrusting intelligence due to having been on the receiving end of oppression carried out by intelligence organizations historically. References to how different ROK administrations have interacted vis-à-vis the intelligence apparatus, when viewed collectively, show this dynamic taking place in South
47 Thomas C. Bruneau, “Intelligence Reform in Brazil: A Long, Drawn-Out Process,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 28, no. 3 (2015), 502–519, http://hdl.handle.net/10945/ 45963.
14 Korea. 48 There is a cyclical trend in intelligence reform in which progressive administrations strip away authorities tied to power abuses, while conservative administrations restore or strengthen them in the name of national security.
D. POTENTIAL EXPLANATIONS AND HYPOTHESES
There are different potential hypotheses for the question of how the existence of North Korea has adversely affected freedoms in South Korea depending on whether one focuses on North-South relations, South Korean domestic politics, or intelligence in new democracies. When considering the genuine threat from North Korea, one might conjecture that the greater the threat level from North Korea, the greater the restrictions on civil liberties in South Korea. If the focus is solely on domestic politics in the ROK, it might be expected that curtailment of freedoms is higher under conservative versus progressive administrations due to the authoritarian legacy of the false narrative conflating the political left with pro-North sympathies. Per observations on intelligence and new democracies, one might hypothesize that an initial continuation of coopting intelligence for political aims under the pretext of national security (and thereby curbing freedoms) would give way to intelligence reform and more freedoms after transfer of power to the opposition. In this hypothesis, given that North Korea is a genuine national security threat, however, as South Korea consolidated democracy, it would work towards balancing reform focused on accountability with effectiveness irrespective of whether progressives or conservatives were in power; national security would no longer be used as justification for repressing political opposition to the government, but neither would laws and policies meant to preserve national security be completely overhauled. In a balanced reform scenario, the intelligence community has enough authority and resources to run counterintelligence investigations on citizens suspected of conducting espionage, for instance, but must operate
48 Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics, 2016); Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948– 1900” in Korea Old and New: A History; Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform”; Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea”; Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History; Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare.”
15 under certain constraints in order to uphold citizens’ freedoms (e.g., disallowing indiscriminate collection of information on citizens).49
Synthesizing the literature on these different focus areas yields the following hypotheses: During the ROK’s authoritarian period, the regime used the genuine and contrived threat of North Korea to justify severe curtailment of freedoms for the purpose of maintaining political power. After democratization, restrictions in freedoms related to North Korea are consistently higher under conservative administrations and lower under progressive administrations due to how the legacy of authoritarianism interacts with the genuine North Korean threat and the right versus left. The following trends support these hypotheses: conservatives have leveraged the false narrative conflating the political left with pro-North Korean sympathies to maintain the political upper hand; progressives have focused on increasing intelligence accountability and liberty rather than intelligence effectiveness and national security due to being subjects of the false narrative; conservatives have rolled back progressive policies that increased civil liberties out of genuine national security concerns. Given the salience of the historical legacy of authoritarianism, this thesis also hypothesizes that an increase in the level of threat from North Korea does not correspond with an uptick in freedoms restrictions under progressive administrations (though they may maintain existing restrictions that predate their administration); on the other hand, an increase in North Korea’s threat level consistently corresponds with increased freedoms restrictions under conservative administrations.
49 The United States’ Executive Order 12333 serves as a useful reference for how a consolidated democracy established intelligence oversight to balance effectiveness with transparency; enacted in response to a series of scandals in the 1970s and 1980s that highlighted the intelligence apparatus’ frequent violations of civil liberties and laws, it emphasizes that “timely, accurate, and insightful information about the activities, capabilities, plans, and intentions of foreign powers, organizations, and persons, and their agents, is essential to the national security of the United States” while also noting that “the United States Government has a solemn obligation, and shall continue in the conduct of intelligence activities under this order, to protect fully the legal rights of all United States persons, including freedoms, civil liberties, and privacy rights guaranteed by Federal Law.” For more details, refer to James Van Wagenen, “A Review of Congressional Oversight,” Central Intelligence Agency Center for the Study of Intelligence, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/ 97unclass/wagenen.html; “Exec. Order No. 12333, 3 C.F.R. (1981), https://dodsioo.defense.gov/Library/ EO-12333/.
16 E. RESEARCH DESIGN
When discussing freedoms, this thesis will refer to categories outlined by Freedom House. Freedom House has a rigorous methodology that is mainly drawn from the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights,50 is the only comprehensive source of empirical data on freedom levels across the globe, and is recognized in the field of political science as the authoritative source on the matter.
Freedom House identifies the following as types of freedoms: political rights, civil liberties, freedom of the press, and freedom on the internet.
Political rights are broken down into the following sub-categories:
• Electoral process
• Political pluralism and participation
• Functioning of government
Civil liberties are broken down into the sub-categories of:
• Freedom of expression and belief
• Associational and organizational rights
• Rule of law
• Personal autonomy and individual rights51
For freedom of the press, Freedom House considers the legal, political, and economic environment the press must operate within. 52 Freedom House’s internet freedom score takes into consideration the categories of “obstacles to access,” “limits on content,” and “violations of user rights.”53
50 “Freedom in the World 2018 Methodology,” Freedom House, Accessed March 18, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/methodology-freedom-world-2018. 51 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018, South Korea.” 52 Freedom House, “Freedom of the Press 2017, South Korea.” 53 “Freedom on the Net 2018, South Korea,” Accessed March 05, 2019, Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2018/south-korea. 17 This thesis will explore how the existence of North Korea has reduced freedoms using South Korean presidential administrations as case studies. This is the most logical way to proceed, given that different administrations have different policies affecting freedoms; it also enables a comparison in the degree of restrictions of freedoms under conservative versus progressive administrations. When referring to restrictions in freedoms that are linked to North Korea, this thesis is referring to legislation, policies, and punitive actions that cite the North Korean threat.
While I will pull from Freedom House’s data in comparing freedom levels across case studies, Freedom House’s reports do not cover the entire time period that this thesis will be exploring. That being the case, I will also be relying on literature regarding North- South relations, South Korean domestic politics, and South Korean intelligence for data prior to 1998. I will additionally utilize news outlets for more recent developments. These sources will also provide context for what drives the trends visible in the empirical data.
An inevitable limitation in this thesis is the lack of publicly available intelligence information generally. It is possible that intelligence assessments have, at times, deemed the North Korean threat to be higher than the perceived threat based on publicly available information—for example, there may be an increased threat in the arena of foreign intelligence despite North Korea limiting provocative actions.
F. THESIS OVERVIEW
This thesis will explore freedoms curtailment during the authoritarian period separately from that of the democratic period. This is a necessary distinction for a few reasons. The most obvious reason for the distinction is the fact that there was a much higher degree of repression during authoritarianism by virtue of the nature of such a system of government. A less obvious reason is that while North Korea has remained an existential threat for the ROK throughout its history, the nature of the threat and North Korea’s relative standing in political and economic legitimacy has been significantly different during the ROK’s authoritarian versus democratic period. Concerns of being politically toppled by the North were real for authoritarian regimes but have since become obsolete for democratic administrations; therefore, North Korea factors into decision-making in a
18 different way post-democratization than it did previously. Following background on the authoritarian period, I will explore freedoms restrictions by using administrations as case studies. Each case study will consider the degree of freedoms curtailment in the categories of political rights, civil liberties, press, and internet as applicable. Given the parallels in types and degrees of freedoms restrictions between administrations on the same side of the political spectrum, I will group case studies by conservative and progressive administrations. I will merge findings for conservative versus progressive administrations under democratic South Korea in order to identify trends in restrictions and factors influencing their implementation.
19 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
20 II. THE AUTHORITARIAN PERIOD
A. INTRODUCTION
South Korea’s authoritarian period was a tumultuous one. In the early decades, when the North had more economic and political stability than the South, the North Korean threat was particularly salient. Anti-communism was a central tenet of the regime’s ideology from the ROK’s founding. The regime developed a narrative that equated criticism of the regime with subversion and pro-North sympathies, and utilized the intelligence apparatus and sham trials to repress political dissidents, justifying freedoms restrictions as a necessary condition for preserving the South Korean state from the North Korean menace. The association between political opposition—those on the left of the political spectrum—and the North Korean threat remained strong post-democratization. In order to understand the dynamics of freedoms restrictions in democratic South Korea that use North Korea as justification, it is first necessary to discuss the origins of the most prevalent narrative used.
B. GENUINE EXISTENTIAL CONCERNS
From 1948 to the 1980s, South Korea’s authoritarian regimes were under political and physical threat from the North. During this Cold War era, North Korea enjoyed a greater degree of political legitimacy than the South.54 Cha notes, “there was a confidence in Pyongyang that their system was better and that unification, the ultimate Korean prize, would eventually be its destiny.”55 Leading up to the Korean War, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung petitioned Stalin to permit the North to invade the South, “[citing] reports of South Korean Communists, who insisted that the entire people of South Korea would rise up against the hated pro-American clique of Syngman Rhee at the first sight of North
54 Victor Cha, “The Best Days” in The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013), 21–22, 45–58. 55 Cha, “The Best Days,” 21.
21 Korean tanks rolling across the border.”56 Kim displayed continued confidence in the weakness of the ROK regime under Rhee’s successor, Park Chung-Hee, and the following leader, Chun Doo-Hwan. In conversations with his close friend Erich Honecker, the general secretary of the Socialist Party for East Germany, Kim described pandemonium in the South and stated, “the DPRK will patiently continue its work with respect to the South so that Park Chung-Hee becomes even more isolated and the struggle for democratization can be continued.”57 When Chun took power, Kim discussed how he would capitalize on the rise of anti-American sentiment to destabilize the Chun regime and expressed his belief that he would soon be able to unify Korea under the North.58
The ROK government likewise perceived North Korea to have the upper hand. North Korea’s Juche ideology of self-reliance reflected the “[myth of] Korean uniqueness, homogeneity, and pure-bloodedness” subscribed to by both Koreas.59 It also aligned with “the [pan-Korean] theme of [desired] independence from predation by outside powers.”60 The United States’ continued presence in and influence on South Korea, coupled with the fact that the ROK government was full of individuals who had collaborated with the Japanese during the brutal colonization of Korea under imperial Japan61 (Park Chung-Hee himself was an officer in the imperial Japanese army),62 ran directly counter to this myth. Though Kim Il-Sung had been propped up by the Soviet Union, this reality was removed from North Korea’s version of history.63 Additionally, Kim had been a guerilla fighter against the Japanese, and the prominence of his role was greatly exaggerated in North
56 Andrei Lankov, The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 12. 57 Cha, “The Best Days,” 51. 58 Cha, “The Best Days,” 51. 59 Cha, “The Best Days,” 45. 60 Cha, “The Best Days,” 45. 61 Andrei Lankov, “The North Korean Bureaucracy is Here to Stay,” NK News.org (6 October 2014), http://www.nknews.org/2014/10/the-north-korean-bureaucracy-is-here-to-stay/. 62 Cha, “The Best Days.” 63 Lankov, The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia, 6–8.
22 Korean propaganda.64 North Korea seized upon the real and perceived contrast between the two regimes to assert itself as the “authentic,” legitimate Korea.65
North Korea additionally engaged in violent provocations, along with infiltrations into the South, during this timeframe. After the Korean war, which it had instigated, North Korea reneged on the 1953 armistice truce on several occasions, “aiming to destabilize the rival regime in the South. The fact that the North carried these out despite the risk of escalation was another manifestation of its confidence…The provocations continued into the 1980s,” and included bold acts of violence against both South Korea and the U.S.; for instance, capturing the USS Pueblo, hacking U.S. soldiers to death in the Joint Security Area, shooting down a U.S. EC-121 navy intelligence plane outside of North Korean airspace, multiple attempts to assassinate South Korean presidents, 66 and bombing a Korean Air flight.67 North Korea also began creating sophisticated tunnels leading to the South in 1972, the first of which was uncovered by the ROK military in 1974.68 A tunnel found in 1978 had five exits leading to South Korea and the capacity to accommodate the transit of roughly thirty thousand military members per hour.69 A 1977 report by the U.S. relayed “the North was actively seeking different covert invasion routes into the South and could probably infiltrate by land, sea, or air to almost anywhere in the South.”70 These incidents exhibit the very real and persistent threat North Korea posed to the South. It was in this type of a security environment out of which the National Security Law (NSL) was conceived, and it served as the catch-all legislation to safeguard the South.
The National Security Law
64 Lankov, The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia, 6–8. 65 Cha, “The Best Days,” 45. 66 Cha, “The Best Days,” 54–57. 67 Diane Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World,” Wisconsin International Law Journal 24, no. 2 (2006): 631, https://uknowledge.uky.edu/law_facpub. 68 Cha, “The Best Days.” 69 Cha, “The Best Days.” 70 Cha, “The Best Days,” 56.
23 The ROK NSL was and remains the primary legal justification for civil liberties restrictions in South Korea in the name of national security. The broadly worded NSL, devised as anti-treason legislation,71 was established shortly after the ROK was founded in 1948 in response to a purported communist insurrection.72 In “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World,” Diane Kraft relays, “the stated purpose of the National Security Law is to prevent anti-state acts from threatening the security of South Korea.”73 The most contentious portion of the law, Article 7, states, “any person who praises, incites or propagates the activities of an anti-government organization…shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than seven years.”74 It is an offense to partake in such activities as having in one’s possession or disseminating “documents, arts or other publications”75 for the purpose of violating Article 7.76 The most severe penalty under the NSL, reserved for “chief instigators or organizers of anti- state groups,” is a life sentence or death.77
The broad-ranging NSL has served a dual purpose since its inception: as an all- encompassing protectorate of national security in the face of the North Korean threat, and as a justification to put down dissidents who were falsely characterized as pro-North Korean communists. As previously outlined, the North historically had more political legitimacy and did in fact fuel further unrest in the South for the very purpose of subverting the ROK government; this being the case, it is likely that South Korean regimes from 1948 to the 1980s had a heightened suspicion that dissidents were co-opted by the North, and used the NSL indiscriminately to neutralize any potential threats stemming from the
71 Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World.” 72 Carter J. Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1900,” in Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson, and Edward W. Wagner, Korea Old and New: A History (Harvard University Press, 1990), 348. 73 Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World,” 628. 74 National Security Act, Law No. 3318 (1980), as revised by Law No. 4373 (1991), art. 1 (S. Korea). 75 National Security Act. 76 Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World.” 77 Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World,” 628. 24 DPRK. The dual usage of the NSL during this period can be largely explained by the ROK government’s understanding that opposition movements—regardless of whether or not its participants had pro-North proclivities and sought to undermine national security—had the ability to destabilize the regime, thereby making its collapse and absorption by the North more viable. In regards to the false narrative specifically, the regime consistently used it remove its political contenders. Both the legitimate use and abuse of the NSL were meant to ensure the regime remained in power.
C. FALSE NARRATIVE: OVERVIEW
The false narrative that equated the opposition (the political left) with communist North Korean sympathizers was a characteristic feature of South Korea’s authoritarian period, which lasted from 1948–1987. Eckert writes, “the NSL defined sedition in so vague and broad a way that the law could easily be used as a political tool by the authorities to suppress virtually any kind of opposition.” 78 In alignment with its anti-Communist ideology, the regime labeled its critics as pro-North communists. The first president of the ROK, Syngman Rhee, “embarked on a campaign of anticommunist witch hunts that eventually affected tens of thousands of people, most of whom had no connection to the Communist Party…by the spring of 1950, the country’s prisons held nearly 60,000 people, 50–80% of whom had been charged with violation of the NSL.”79 The outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, served as further justification for Rhee targeting the left “on an even more massive and brutal scale.”80 In 1959, Rhee purged the only remaining contender for office in the 1960 presidential election (the others were assassinated, fled, and died from cardiac arrest) via execution for supposed violation of the NSL.81
78 Carter Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1990” in Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson, and Edward Wagner, Korea Old and New: A History (Harvard University Press, 1990), 349. 79 Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1990,” 349. 80 Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1990,” 349. 81 Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1990.”
25 Oppressive use of the NSL continued under Park Chung-Hee (1961-1979) and Chun Doo-Hwan (1980-1987), both of whom took control of the government via military coup. Under Park’s rule, “[the] existing National Security Law had been supplemented by an Anticommunist Law in 1961, and by a subsequent barrage of security legislation… Arbitrary arrests, prolonged detentions, forced confessions under torture, and sham trials followed by imprisonment or execution became the order of the day for anyone who dared to take a stand.”82 The NSL was used to attempt to silence political opponents Kim Dae- Jung and Kim Yong-Sam, who would later become presidents in democratic South Korea.83 The Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), created by military officers loyal to Park who assisted in the orchestration of his coup, was a primary mechanism through which to paint political opponents as pro-North communists and depose them.84 Perhaps the most dramatic example of the KCIA carrying out this function was its kidnapping and attempted assassination of Kim Dae-Jung in 1973.
Under Chun’s regime, three would-be presidential candidates were accused of violating the NSL.85 Among these candidates was Kim Dae-Jung. While he ultimately avoided execution, Kim was sentenced to death for inciting the Kwangju uprising,86 a peaceful, pro-democracy protest turned massacre by Chun’s deployment of ROK army special operations forces to violently put down protestors. Chun additionally used the NSL as justification to “[crack] down on the press, removing 937 editors and journalists from their posts and putting newspapers and radio and television stations under government
82 Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1990,” 369. 83 Byung-Kook Kim, Pyŏng-guk Kim, and Ezra F. Vogel, The Park Chung Hee era: The transformation of South Korea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011). 84 Kim, Kim, and Vogel, The Park Chung Hee era the transformation of South Korea. 85 Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World.” 86 Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World.”
26 control.”87 In sum, the legitimate threat that North Korea posed enabled the regime to suppress any dissent—whether truly North Korea-related or not—in the name of national security.
False Narrative and the Intelligence Apparatus
The threat of absorption by the communist North—both genuine and contrived— served as the principal justification for the ROK’s authoritarian regimes to restrict civil liberties, particularly those of their critics, in the name of national security. From 1961– 1979, the most powerful intelligence organization utilized toward this end was the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA).88 The KCIA stifled dissent, neutralized political opponents and critics of the regime, and assisted the regime with power consolidation and maintenance through various means, and continued to do so after being reformulated into the Agency for National Security Planning (ANSP) in 1980.89
The KCIA was founded in 1961 by ROK army officers involved in facilitating Major General Park Chung Hee’s coup d’état earlier that year.90 Article 18 of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction (SCNR)—the military junta led by Park—stated the main function of the agency was “to prevent indirect invasion by Communist groups and remove obstacles impeding the implementation of remaining domestic revolutionary tasks, including…solidifying the groundwork for winning the competition with Communist North Korea toward national unification.”91 This directly reflected the first pledge the
87 Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World,” 632; Geir Helgesen, Henriette Sinding Aesen, and Uichol Kim, “Analysis of Democracy and Human Rights in Cultural Context: Psychological and Comparative Perspectives” in Democracy, Human Rights, and Peace in Korea: Psychological, Political, and Cultural Perspectives (Seoul: Kyoyook-Kwahak-Sa, 2001), 53, 83– 84. 88 Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics, 2016), 154–155. 89 Hyesoo Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 31, no. 3 (September 2018), 454–455, https://doi.org/10.1080/08850607.2018.1466566. 90 Kim, Kim, and Vogel, The Park Chung Hee era the transformation of South Korea, 56. 91 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 454.
27 junta announced to the country following their coup, which proclaimed, “Positive, uncompromising opposition to communism is the basis of our policy.”92 In 1964, the agency was 370,000 strong, with one in 54 people in the ROK working for the KCIA.93 Greitens observes that “by the mid-1960s…[the KCIA] had assumed ‘coordinating power’ or ‘coordinating authority’ over the entire internal security apparatus, unifying intelligence and anti-dissident investigations and operations under a single authority.”94 The KCIA had the right to give orders to, oversee, and view the records of the other intelligence and security services, and “directed the activities of the Prosecutor’s Office.”95 The law also mandated that the other services keep the KCIA apprised when opening investigations, and that the Prosecutor’s Office inform the KCIA of charges levied and sentences issued.96 By the latter half of the 1960s, the KCIA was ubiquitous—“on campuses, on newspaper staffs, overhearing conversations in every bar and tea room. [Their] funds entered every activity…By the time of the 1967 elections…conversations on sensitive subjects became noticeably hushed, and the glance over the shoulder began to take on the characteristic of a national nervous tic.”97
In the 1960s, the KCIA primarily leveraged “funds instead of guns” in order to deal with government critics.98 Throughout the authoritarian period, university students were a prominent source of mobilized dissent.99 The KCIA made it extremely expensive to run for a position in the student government and funded scholarships for student leader
92 Se-Jin Kim, The Politics of Military Revolution in Korea (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 35 93 Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police, 154–155. 94 Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police, 150. 95 Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police, 151. 96 Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police, 151. 97 Joungwon Kim, Divided Korea: The Politics of Development, 1945–1972 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 265. 98 Kim, Divided Korea, 265. 99 Eckert, “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1900.”
28 dissidents to go overseas.100 The agency also exerted influence over banks in order to shutdown media outlets that espoused opinions that did not align with the government’s; for instance, a newspaper that ran an article promoting unification went bankrupt after its loans were withdrawn101 (Park was adamant that to seek unification “with the society in a state of chaos…is the way to national suicide,” writing that “theories about unifying the country under neutralism, such as those loudly proposed by the students, provide the opportunity for a bloodless Communist coup d’état.”)102 In 1964, however, following nationwide protests in response to Park seeking to normalize relations with Japan in what many felt to be an ignominious fashion,103 “martial law was declared, the opposition silenced, and the proposed changes carried out in an atmosphere of crisis and fear created by the exposure of a northern ‘plot.’”104 The KCIA declared 41 people had been arrested on suspicion of membership in the People’s Revolutionary Party, which it claimed to be a secret group acting on behalf of North Korea to attempt to start a revolution in the South.105 Thirteen people were charged; however, “the prosecutors and courts…at that time retained a degree of judicial independence and found the charges so ill-founded that they first acquitted all but two of the defendants and then when the government insisted on a retrial, found all guilty under the Anti-Communist Law, but of…trivial matters.”106
In the 1970s, Park increasingly restricted freedoms in the ROK, claiming there to be an elevated threat from the North.107 In 1971, Park announced he would have to resort to instating martial law if he were not provided greater authority to address, in his terms,
100 Kim, Divided Korea, 265. 101 Kim, Divided Korea, 265. 102 Kim, The Politics of Military Revolution in Korea, 35. 103 “Executions Still Smart 30 Years After,” Chosun Ilbo, April 08, 2005, http://english.chosun.com/ site/data/html_dir/2005/04/08/2005040861025.html. 104 Walter Easy and Gavan McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” in Korea North and South: The Deepening Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978), 82. 105 “Executions Still Smart 30 Years After.” 106 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 82. 107 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 82.
29 “North Korean preparations for an invasion,” along with an increase in North Korean agents and the potential for terrorist incidents in the ROK.108 In October 1971, a garrison decree mobilized the military to put down protests. 109 Shortly thereafter, the implementation of the “Law Concerning Special Measures for Safeguarding National Security” gave Park “almost unlimited emergency power…to restrict civil liberties [and] mobilize the whole populace for the purpose of national security.”110 A New York Times editorial written at the end of that year pointed out that “Outside observers, including the State Department and the American Embassy in Seoul” saw no indication of such threats, wryly commenting, “The external threat Mr Park evidently fears is not military attack but just the opposite—détente.”111 In 1972, Park put into effect martial law under what he termed the Yushin (“revitalizing reforms”) system, replacing the constitution and doing away with the National Assembly “on the grounds that the nation must be strong and united to deal with the North and maintain its independence in a changing international environment.” 112 In a state department cable, Philip Habib, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea at the time, stated, “the measures proposed are designed to ensure that President Park will stay in office for at least twelve years with even less opposition and dissent and with increased executive powers…there is little doubt that these measures are unnecessary given any objective view of the situation.” 113
The KCIA aided Park in carrying out his agenda of tightening control to stymie opposition and spreading fear of the danger of North Korea, arresting political opposition leaders, abducting Kim Dae Jung in a possible assassination attempt,114 dictating to the
108 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 82. 109 Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 357. 110 Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, 371–72. 111 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 82. 112 Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History New ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 37–8. 113 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 37–8. 114 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 43.
30 press what to release, and repressing dissidents.115 As Yushin was being declared, “to silence opposition, Park arrested most of the senior political leaders of the country”;116 Kim Dae Jung managed to avoid detention due to being in Japan, where he remained in order to freely criticize the regime until he was abducted by KCIA agents the next year.117 In August 1973, Kim Dae Jung was beaten, sedated, and taken from his hotel in Tokyo to a ship “where he was tightly trussed and weights placed on his hands and legs.” Following a strongly-worded warning from the U.S. to the ROK government, Kim was dropped off near his home in Seoul “bound and gagged” and subjected to house arrest before eventually being jailed on charges of “sedition.” 118 After the instatement of Yushin, KCIA agents visited key media outlets every day for over a year’s time, relaying “what news they could or could not report, at times specifying the size of the headlines and the prominence of the display to be given to particular items. Due to this system, Park’s picture and activities dominated the news.” 119 Members of the press who did not cooperate were interrogated and frequently beaten.120 Facing increased criticism following Yushin, Park “sought to silence all those who interfered or disagreed with his policies by temporary detention, arrest or imprisonment.” 121 The KCIA tortured critics by placing them “spread-eagled over a flame,” continually submerging their heads underwater, and waterboarding.122
In 1974, Park orchestrated events in order to validate his claim of Northern bellicosity, thus manipulating public opinion and rationalizing the passage of draconian emergency decrees. In early 1974, Park passed emergency decrees criminalizing criticism
115 “Executions Still Smart 30 Years After”; Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 82–85 116 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 37–8. 117 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 42. 118 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 176–77. 119 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 42. 120 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 42. 121 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 41. 122 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 41.
31 of his Yushin constitution and banning a federation of students it deemed to be “subversive.” 123 Amidst heightened public unrest and the expectation of large-scale protests, “an unprovoked…naval attack” from North Korea led the public to become swept up in “a frenzied campaign of vilification and war readiness”; an anti-communist demonstration encompassing one million people resulted. 124 A telegram from the Hungarian embassy in North Korea dated February 25, 1974, stated, “In the view of…the head of the Czechoslovak delegation in the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission in Panmunjom, the spy ship incident that occurred on February 15 is more advantageous to Park Chung Hee than to the North. In the recent months, [his] political position has become more unstable…By launching a massive campaign over the incident and appealing to the emotions [of the South Korean population], [he] might be able to achieve a temporary re- stabilization of his rule.”125 In June of that year, another naval provocation occurred, engendering a “mood of crisis and hysteria.” 126 The prior Chief of Staff of the ROK navy relayed the next year that “according to his formal naval subordinates,” the conveniently timed naval incidents were, in actuality, instigated by the ROK.127 In 1975, with the U.S. failure in and exit from Vietnam in the backdrop, Park continually claimed that a North Korean attack was likely, backed large-scale anti-communist demonstrations, and put Emergency Decree #9128—which “made criticism of the regime a violation of national security laws”—into place.129 However, the U.S. secretary of state, assistant secretary of
123 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas 51. 124 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 82. 125 “Hungarian Embassy in the DPRK, Telegram, 25 February 1974. Subject: Naval incident between the DPRK and South Korea.,” February 25, 1974, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MOL, XIX-J-1-j Korea, 1974, 66. doboz, 81–432, 001961/1974. Translated for NKIDP by Balazs Szalontai. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115807. 126 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare , 83. 127 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare , 83. 128 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare , 83–4. 129 Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police, 160.
32 state, defense secretary, U.S. embassy, and 8th Army all assessed that there were no indications of an impending attack from the north.130
Capitalizing on the fear generated by the Park regime’s propaganda and event engineering, the KCIA manufactured national security cases to add merit to the notion of a heightened North Korean threat while eliminating regime critics. The agency tortured dissidents to obtain false confessions, thus securing high profile convictions of supposed North Korean agents operating in the South.131 In April 1974, dissidents accused of membership in the People’s Revolutionary Party a decade prior were rearrested and convicted of rebuilding the party after making torture-induced confessions to the KCIA.132 In July 1974, shortly after the second naval incident with North Korea, seven individuals associated with the student federation banned by emergency decree, to include Kim Chi Ha—a famous poet previously convicted under the anti-communist law after derisively disparaging the regime in his writing133—were sentenced to death.134135 A few days later, the short-lived president prior to Park’s coup, Yun Po Sun, was put on trial, along with several pastors and professors. 136 In April 1975, the eight men accused of involvement in the People’s Revolutionary Party were promptly executed “less than 20 hours” after sentencing. 137 A 1975 Amnesty International report stated, “it is the considered opinion of this mission that…the PRP case of 1964 had been fabricated in an attempt to rouse the Korean people’s feelings on the North-South issue. This we find to have been the aim in 1974; it was further an attempt to arouse prejudice against academic,
130 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 83–4. 131 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 83–4. 132 “Executions still smart 30 years after.” 133 Kim, Divided Korea, 279. 134 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 51. 135 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 83. 136 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 83. 137 “In Seoul, marking the somber anniversary of executions,” New York Times, April 11, 2005, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/world/asia/in-seoul-marking-a-somber-anniversary-of- executions.html.
33 church and other demands for liberalization.” 138 Post-democratization, a commission established by former dissident turned president Kim Dae Jung determined the People’s Revolutionary Party was a nonexistent organization made up by the KCIA.139
Civil liberties restrictions, and the KCIA’s role in implementing them, continued under Chun Doo Hwan. Following Park’s 1979 assassination by his KCIA chief for reasons unclear, Major General Chun Doo Hwan, the director of the Defense Security Command (DSC)—the military’s intelligence and security service—took control of the ROK government via coup in December of that year.140 Invoking a state of emergency, Chun appointed himself the acting, then official, director of the KCIA before becoming president in September 1980.141 “Throughout this process, Chun used the KCIA to spread plausible rumors about North Korean infiltration to create a mood of fear among the public, justifying greater involvement of the military in the government and centralizing politics under strong leadership.”142 Chun quickly set about muzzling the media: he facilitated the firing of over 700 journalists critical of his regime, shut down newspapers, put into place a “Basic Press Law” significantly constraining the press, and mandated that newspapers adhere to the Ministry of Culture and Information’s “guidelines.” 143 “One constant guideline was to label all anti-government protestors as ‘pro-communist.’”144
While Chun made hierarchical changes in the intelligence apparatus—elevating the DSC, renaming the KCIA the Agency for National Security Planning (ANSP) and
138 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” 83. 139 “In Seoul, marking the somber anniversary of executions.” 140 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 454 141 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 454 142 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 454 143 Jae-Youl Kim, “Democratisation in South Korea,” in Korea under Roh Tae-Woo: Democratisation, Northern Policy and Inter-Korean Relations (Printery: Australian National University, 1993), 47–8. 144 Kim, “Democratisation in South Korea,” 47–8.
34 downgrading its role to one of “planning and coordinating” in 1981 145 —the ANSP remained a critical tool for his regime. The agency actively monitored and censored the media, forcing newspapers to display a photo of Chun daily, “often [intimidating] and [assaulting] outspoken journalists,” and prohibiting a comedian who had the unfortune of happening to be Chun’s doppelganger from being televised.146 ANSP agents “constantly monitored pro-democratic, allegedly subversive figures by deploying intelligence agents in city centers and around university campuses who stopped, questioned, and arrested citizens without due process.”147 They worked to sabotage the political opposition; in one instance, gangs disrupted Reunification Democratic Party regional office opening ceremonies on the ANSP Director’s orders.148
The existence of North Korea resulted in serious freedoms restrictions under South Korea’s authoritarian regime. This was due to the genuine and continual threat the DPRK posed to the ROK, along with the utilization of that threat as a pretext to portray political opponents as North Korean co-optees. During the authoritarian period, the NSL served as the primary legal justification to limit freedom of expression for the sake or under the pretense of preserving national security. The regime perpetuated a false narrative labeling its critics as pro-North Korean communists, overtly abusing the NSL to suppress its opponents. This continued after top-down democratization in the early stages of democracy, but was no longer feasible after democratic consolidation; there was a dramatic decrease in NSL indictments beginning in 1998 under the Kim Dae-jung administration (see Figure 1 for a graph of NSL indictments by year from 1985–2012). Nevertheless, conservative administrations in democratically consolidated South Korea continued to promote this narrative through other, at times surreptitious, means.
145 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 455. 146 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 455. 147 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 455. 148 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 455. 35 Figure 1. Indictments under the National Security Law, 1985–2012
Source: Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 173.
36 III. CONSERVATIVE ADMINISTRATIONS IN DEMOCRATIC SOUTH KOREA
A. INTRODUCTION
Doucette and Koo discuss the pervasiveness of the concept of kongan chŏngch’i, translated as “politics by public security,” in conservative administrations’ political rhetoric and actions in democratic South Korea.149 “Politics by public security” has served as justification for various freedoms restrictions, masking actions taken for political gain or to impose political retribution as legitimately carried out for the sake of national security. Doucette and Koo draw a parallel between “the notion of pan’gong—anticommunism—as well as wide circulation of terms intended to heighten a sense of fear among the population, such as ppalgaengi or ‘Reds,’ and kanch’ŏp or ‘spies’”150 under the authoritarian regime of Park Chung-hee, with kongan chŏngch’i—politics by public security—and the terms chongbuk chwap’a (“pro-North leftists”) commonly used by conservative administrations post-democratization. They observe that ppalgaengi and kanch’ŏp “were discursive antecedents to the less colourful but nonetheless potent chongbuk and chwap’a of today’s state usage.”151
B. ROH TAE-WOO ADMINISTRATION (FEBRUARY 1988–FEBRUARY 1993)
In 1987, South Korea’s authoritarian regime facilitated a transfer to democracy in which members of the old order remained in the new system of government152 in what
149 Jamie Doucette and Se-Woong Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 46:2 (2016), 198–221. 150 Doucette & Koo, ““Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 211. 151 Doucette & Koo, ““Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 211. 152 Hyung Gu Lynn, “Pandora’s Box? South Korea’s Democratization and Consolidation” in Bipolar Orders: The Two Koreas since 1989 (New York: Zed Books, 2007).
37 Slater and Wong term the decision to “concede to thrive”—in other words, to democratize on its own terms after determining there to be a high likelihood of preserving its survival under favorable conditions by doing so.153 In response to mass pro-democracy protests in Gwangju in 1980 following his military coup, Chun Doo-Hwan sent in special operations troops to quell the uprising in a brutal crackdown that killed hundreds,154 which “severely damaged the Chun government from its very inception. While [the previous leader, Park Chung-Hee] had taken power in a bloodless coup, Chun had done so through the massacre of citizens.”155 The massacre served as “symbolic capital for opposition leaders” and led the democracy movement to swell.156 Mobilized opposition was a signature feature of South Korea from its inception; by the 1980s, because the pro-democracy, “antiauthoritarian movement” encompassed several different elements of society, the regime found effective repression to be challenging.157 Additionally, public reaction to the Gwangju Massacre made Chun wary of repeating his former tactics when mass pro- democracy protests occurred in 1987. 158 Following Gwangju, the U.S. increasingly “[signaled] that political reform was a high priority for Korea’s American allies,” and South Korea found itself facing increasing coverage and scrutiny internationally leading up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics.159 This posed concerns for the regime that its authoritarian practices were undermining its legitimacy both domestically and internationally.
Taking all of this into account, Roh Tae-Woo, a prominent member of Chun’s regime groomed by Chun to be his successor, responded to protests by promising a democratic transition, acknowledging that human rights violations had been “slighted in
153 Dan Slater and Joseph Wong, “The Strength to Concede: Ruling Parties and Democratization in Developmental Asia.” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 3 (September 1, 2013): 717–33. 154 Lynn, “Pandora’s Box?” 155 Lynn, “Pandora’s Box?” 156 Lynn, “Pandora’s Box?” 157 Slater and Wong, “The Strength to Concede, 727. 158 Lynn, “Pandora’s Box?” 159 Slater and Wong, “The Strength to Concede: Ruling Parties and Democratization in Developmental Asia.”
38 the name of economic growth and national security” in the past, and promising that this era was at an end.160 “Roh’s proclamations…credibly positioned the incumbent [Democratic Justice Party (DJP)] as a democratic party,” expanding his voter base to members of the democracy movement who had hitherto vehemently opposed the DJP’s rule.161 While retaining pre-democratic tendencies, upon being democratically elected in February 1988, “[President Roh Tae-woo] accepted the restrictions on his authority imposed by a more democratic political order.”162 Roh declared in his first presidential address, “The day when freedoms and human rights could be slighted in the name of economic growth and national security has ended. The day when…torture in secret chambers [was] tolerated is over.”163 With the Seoul Olympics around the corner, Roh proposed a temporary truce to the political opposition in August 1988 in order to project a positive image of the ROK and avoid a repeat of the Asian Games in 1986 during which “street demonstrations had been strictly held in abeyance by abundant security forces.”
Under Roh, the ANSP’s domestic intelligence role was diminished, with the ANSP removing its agents from the Seoul Criminal Court and Supreme Court.164 Roh, who had previously headed the DSC under the Chun regime, also replaced the DSC commander and undertook reform of the military intelligence service to limit its authority.165 Kim, Liddle, and Said observe that “after April 1989, DSC surveillance of the state bureaucracy was
160 Slater and Wong, “The Strength to Concede: Ruling Parties and Democratization in Developmental Asia.” 161 Slater and Wong, “The Strength to Concede: Ruling Parties and Democratization in Developmental Asia.” 727. 162 Seth, A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present, 214. 163 Jerome Alan Cohen and Edward J. Baker, ‘U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights in South Korea’, in William Shaw (ed.), Human Rights in Korea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 223. 164 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform.” 165 “Political leadership and Civilian Supremacy in Third Wave Democracies: Comparing South Korea and Indonesia,” 253.
39 greatly reduced.” 166 Still, DSC’s monitoring of political opposition and government critics in the name of national security continued. In October 1990, Army Private Yun Sok- yang of the DSC “disclosed…[a domestic] spy program [to the public] by showing reporters computer discs and dossiers that contain information secretly gathered on about 1,300 politicians, religious figures, journalists, labor leaders and student activists.”167 Among the civilians surveilled were prior dissidents and future presidents Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam.168 The Washington Post reported, “Local newspapers reported that some DSC officers face discipline and possible court-martial—not for domestic spying but for allowing the computer discs and documents to slip out of their hands. An arrest warrant [was] issued for the private who sparked the scandal by deserting the DSC and filching the classified information.” 169 Roh did, however, fire the minister of defense and army intelligence chief in response to the revelations. Kim, Liddle, and Said explain Roh’s actions as being the result of his attempt to present his administration as a civilian, democratic one, rather than a continuation of the prior regime in the eyes of the public.170 They note, “Roh was simultaneously trusted by the military and distrusted by society…Opposition forces, including civil society, did not accept Roh’s government as fully legitimate, because of his participation in the 1979 [military] seizure of power [under Chun Doo-hwan]. Roh resolved this tension and simultaneously strengthened his own hand by choosing to stay on the reform path.” 171
166 Yong Cheol Kim, R. William Liddle, and Sam Said, “Political leadership and Civilian Supremacy in Third Wave Democracies: Comparing South Korea and Indonesia,” Pacific Affairs 79 no. 2 (Summer 2006), 253. 167 Peter Maass, “Roh Fires 2 “Officials in S. Korea,” Washington Post, October 9, 1990, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/10/09/roh-fires-2-officials-in-s-korea/25581c2e- 092e-408b-8009-811b1cca7ff8/?noredirect=on. 168 Maass, “Roh Fires 2 “Officials in S. Korea.” 169 Maass, “Roh Fires 2 “Officials in S. Korea.” 170 Kim, Liddle, and Said, “Political leadership and Civilian Supremacy in Third Wave Democracies: Comparing South Korea and Indonesia,” 253. 171 Kim, Liddle, and Said, “Political leadership and Civilian Supremacy in Third Wave Democracies: Comparing South Korea and Indonesia,” 252–253.
40 Democratization enabled the opposition to be the majority in the National Assembly, the ROK’s legislative body. This in turn led the National Assembly “to play a more assertive role in governance, carrying out investigative and oversight functions.”172 Kim Hong-nack observes that “under the leadership of opposition parties, a series of parliamentary investigations…not only exposed the corrupt nature of the Chun government, but also the incredible abuse of power by Chun and his powerful lieutenants.”173 Likewise, the judicial branch, which had functioned as an arm of the executive, rallied to have its independence restored, resulting in the appointment of a new chief justice without links to the administration.174
However, serious freedoms restrictions, while notably less egregious than in the authoritarian days, continued after the conclusion of the Olympic Games. Despite an increase in freedom of the press, freedom of expression and political rights was repressed. 175 MacDonald states, “The restrictive National Security Law and other legislation of previous regimes were still largely unchanged. The laws were vigorously enforced against student, worker, and other groups challenging the regime in power. Complaints of brutality by security agencies and unjustified arrest and detention continued. President Roh, who had promised to hold some kind of midterm referendum or evaluation of his administration, postponed it indefinitely.” 176 Lynn writes, “Ultimately, Roh’s government was seen as a continuation, albeit garbed in a softer, more diplomatic aura, of previous authoritarian regimes.”177
172 Seth, A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present, 214. 173 Hong-nack Kim, “The 1988 Parliamentary Election in South Korea” in Korea under Roh Tae- woo: Democratisation, Northern Policy and Inter-Korean Relations, ed. James Cotton, (Canberra: ANU Printery, 1993), 126. 174 Seth, A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present, 214. 175 Seth, A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present.; MacDonald, The Koreans: Contemporary Politics and Society. 176 MacDonald, The Koreans: Contemporary Politics and Society, 123. 177 Lynn, “Pandora’s Box?: South Korea’s Democratization and Consolidation,” 39.
41 Watchdog organization Human Rights Watch notes that the NSL subjects individuals who are members of or are responsible for others joining an “anti-government organization” to “severe criminal penalties,” but does not delineate what an “anti- government organization” entails. Resultantly, this verbiage “has been used to apply to everything from North Korea itself to organizations that simply express ideological views at odds with those of the South Korean government.”178 Lynn observes that “Roh’s image was eroded by his so-called ‘Protect the System’ declaration in December 1988, which signaled a crackdown on civil society once the truce during the Olympics ceased. In 1988 and 1989 labor strikes and student demonstrations reached a peak in frequency, as demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails at riot police, who in turn launched tear gas at their opponents. The statistics for official arrests of dissidents for violations of the National Security Law averaged 5.4 persons per day in 1989.”179 Overall, upwards of 1,000 politically active unionists and students were imprisoned during Roh’s term due to alleged public security concerns, though “observers noted at the time that the Roh government was deliberately vague when handling student and labour activism about what constituted subversive activity and how it threatens national security.”180
It is notable that a significantly lower number of NSL arrests occurred in 1987 (an average of 1.6 per day) and 1988 (an average of 2.6 a day) leading up to the Olympic Games in Seoul. 181 A Congressional Research Service report on North Korean provocations lists four provocations in 1987, two in 1988, and none in 1989.182 All provocations in 1987 were egregious; they comprised an attempted abduction, successful
178 “South Korea: Cold War Relic Law Criminalizes Criticism,” Human Rights Watch, May 28, 2015, https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/28/south-korea-cold-war-relic-law-criminalizes-criticism. 179 Lynn, “Pandora’s Box?: South Korea’s Democratization and Consolidation,” 39. 180 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,”210 referencing C. G. Park, “Dead-end Democracy: Who Can Lead It in Korea?” Korea Times, August 25, 1991. 181 Lynn, “Pandora’s Box?: South Korea’s Democratization and Consolidation,” 39. 182 Dick K. Nanto, “North Korea: Chronology of Provocations, 1950 – 2003,” Congressional Research Service, Updated March 18, 2003.
42 abductions, and a terrorist attack meant to dissuade participation in the Seoul Olympics (the bombing of a Korean Airline plane killed all 115 people onboard). 183 The provocations listed for 1988 were more abstract: the U.S. Secretary of State declared North Korea to be “a country which has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” and “the head of a North Korean trading company revealed after his defection to the South that North Korean embassies around the world had been ordered to do everything possible to stop other countries from participating in the Seoul Olympics.”184 Using North Korean provocations as a proxy for the level of threat South Korea faced from the North, there is an inverse correlation between the threat level and the number of NSL arrests from the years 1987–1989. In other words, based on this data, the spike in NSL arrests are not attributable to a genuinely higher threat level from the North causing the administration to emphasize national security over freedoms. Rather, it appears to be indicative of the Roh administration resuming the practice—placed on hold when the ROK was in the international spotlight leading up to and during the Olympics—of using a contrived North Korean threat as justification to suppress dissent.
Hong notes that the expression “politics by public security” originated with the Roh administration. Writing about Roh’s government in 1991, Hong states that “‘the public security-led political environment—Gongan Chungkuk’ symbolizes the…[political elite]’s attempts to reconcile two conflicting needs: political democratization and preservation of their own vested interests.”185 Doucette and Koo observe that “amidst growing popular demands for chaebol [conglomerate] reform, peaceful reconciliation with North Korea, and the recognition of labour rights, former prosecutors-cum-politicians in Roh’s administration selectively utilised the legal system…[characterizing] popular protests as a
183 Nanto, “North Korea: Chronology of Provocations, 1950 – 2003,” CRS-10. 184 “North Korea: Chronology of Provocations, 1950 – 2003,” CRS-10. 185 Yung Lee Hong, “South Korea in 1991: Unprecedented Opportunity, Increasing Challenge” in “A Survey of Asia in 1991: Part I,” Asian Survey 32 no. 1 (January 1992), 64–73.
43 threat to both public order…and national security (by insinuating an alliance between liberal-left political forces and North Korea).”186
C. THE “NEW RIGHT”: CONSERVATIVE ADMINISTRATIONS FOLLOWING THE DECADE OF PROGRESSIVE RULE
Both the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations fall under a movement known as the “New Right.” The New Right arose as a response to the election of President Roh Moo-hyun,187 who skewed heavily left ideologically. Doucette and Koo observe that in contrast with the conservatives of old, “rather than staunchly defending dictatorship against democracy, the New Right affirms democracy as a desirable system. However, ignoring the history of the democratic political struggle, the New Right has sought to explain democratisation by stressing the contribution of the Park Chung-hee regime.”188 The New Right point to economic modernization under Park as the crucial factor that enabled the transition to democracy, while deriding the period of progressive rule from 1998–2008 “the lost decade.”189 They characterize the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations’ emphasis on bringing the ROK’s authoritarian regimes’ abuses to light and positively engaging North Korea as having deleterious effects on the ROK.190
The New Right is an active practitioner of “politics by public security,” a concept popularized by Roh Tae-woo, which in turn was derived from the false narrative labeling progressives as pro-North sympathizers cultivated by the ROK’s authoritarian regimes. Doucette and Koo observe, “in summary, the conservative interference in democratic
186 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 210. 187 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 213. 188 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 213. 189 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 213. 190 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea.”
44 politics finds its justification in revisiting the history of South Korean military dictatorships, conferring greater legitimacy on contemporary conservative forces, conflating national security with public security so as to contain dissent, and presenting itself as the very medium of democratic rule while casting [progressive] democratisation activists as anti-state and therefore antidemocracy.”191
Allegations of NSL violations and indictments spiked under the conservative administrations of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye from 2008–2017 relative to the numbers under the prior decade of progressive rule.192 “The number of people indicted for NSL violations increased from 34 in 2006 and 2007 [under progressive president Roh Moo-hyun] to 91 in 2011 and 74 in 2012 [under Lee].”193 In 2013, the transition year from Lee to Park, who took office in February 2013, “there were 129 cases involving alleged violations of the NSL…the highest number in a decade” and almost three times the amount in 2008.”194 In an article discussing the NSL, the Diplomat observes that because “South Korea guarantees freedom of speech, press, petition, and assembly for its nationals…that contradiction means that the law’s implementation has heavily depended on each government’s stance toward the North.”195 In keeping with the staunchly anti-communist rhetoric and sensitivity towards the North Korean threat of their forebears, the
191 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 201 192 “South Korea: National Security Law continues to restrict freedom of expression,” Amnesty International Public Statement, January 20, 2015, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/212000/ asa250012015en.pdf.; “Freedom on the Net 2017: South Korea Country Profile,” Freedom House, Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2017/south-korea; Freedom in the World 2018” South Korea Profile,” Freedom House, Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/ report/freedom-world/2018/south-korea. 193 Haggard and You, 172. 194 Amnesty International, “South Korea: National Security Law continues to restrict freedom of expression.” 195 Tae-jun Kang, “Is South Korea Ready to Say Goodbye to Its National Security Law,” Diplomat, December 21, 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/is-south-korea-ready-to-say-goodbye-to-its-national- security-law/.
45 conservatives remained hawks after democratic consolidation,196 which arguably occurred after power transferred from the conservatives to the progressives for the first time. It can be surmised that the number of NSL violation accusations under the Lee and Park administrations is in part due to this factor. Encouraging prosecution of generic actions that might indicate pro-North sympathies—for instance, the distribution of Marxist literature197—and any dissemination of North Korean propaganda, even if done in jest,198 aligns with a hardline approach to the North Korean threat.
While the NSL served as choice legislation for indiscriminate repression of political dissent under the ROK’s dictatorships, and continued to be levied in this fashion under the Roh Tae-woo and Kim Young-sam administrations, 199 it appears that democratic consolidation has rendered this tactic largely untenable. This does not, however, mean that the practice of political retribution using the pretense of national security has been discontinued. Rather, it has manifested through other, less blatant—and at times, secret— means and practices with roots in the authoritarian period. These have ranged from undue influence on the media, to prosecution of political critics under defamation laws, to colluding with the intelligence and prosecutorial apparatus to bring down dissenters. Haggard and You note that “the prosecution has often been directly influenced by the
196 Ha-young Choi, “The North Korean Wind and South Korean Elections,” NK News, April 14, 2016, https://www.nknews.org/2016/04/the-north-korean-wind-and-south-korean-elections/. 197 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2017: South Korea Country Profile.” 198 “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2013,” Freedom House, Accessed August 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/south-korea. 199 In 1990, prior dissident Kim Young-sam merged his progressive party with two conservative parties in an “unholy alliance” meant to rectify a “hung parliament” situation in the National Assembly. One conservative party was led by Kim Jong-pil, who established the KCIA, while the other was led by then President Roh Tae-woo. Refer to Young Whan Kihl, Transforming Korean Politics: Democracy, Reform, and Culture, (New York: Routledge, 2005), 89, and Sang-hun Choe, “Kim Jong-pil, Political Kingmaker in South Korea, Dies at 92,”New York Times, June 23, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/obituaries/kim-jong-pil-south-korea.html for more details. 199 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 178.
46 president and complaints about the politicisation of the prosecution have risen, particularly under the Lee administration. These problems continued under the Park presidency.”200
Haggard and You also observe that the president has the ability to alter the degree of freedom of expression restrictions due to “the limited restraints on the president and the lack of judicial independence. The constitution gives the president relatively strong powers vis-à-vis both other branches of government.”201 One example of this is the fact that the president has the authority to appoint all of the ministers that make up his or her cabinet, even if the National Assembly opposes their nominations. 202 Though the National Assembly holds confirmation hearings prior to minister appointments, these are non- binding.203 “Moreover, since South Korean presidents tend to exercise strong discipline within their parties, their power is relatively unconstrained when the ruling party has a majority in the National Assembly.” 204 They note that unlike with the first four presidents in the ROK post-democratization, who “were partly constrained by divided government at least for part of their presidencies,” Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye’s party had a majority in the legislature for the duration of their term.205
1. Lee Myung-Bak Administration (February 2008–February 2013)
The conservative Lee administration curtailed more freedoms than the administrations of his progressive predecessors. Some of these restrictions appeared to reflect a more hardline approach to the genuine North Korean threat. Internet censorship and NSL prosecutions for “expressing North Korean sympathies” online increased
200 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 178. 201 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 178. 202 Myo-ja Ser, “Moon reshuffles cabinet to push forward policies,” Korea JoongAng Daily, August 10, 2019, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=3066574.; Sung-eun Lee, “Squabbling at Assembly could mean no hearing for Cho,” Korea JoongAng Daily, August 31, 2019, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/Article.aspx?aid=3067432 203 Ser, “Moon reshuffles cabinet to push forward policies.” 204 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 178. 205 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 178.
47 significantly, as did NIS authorities that necessarily decreased defectors’ civil liberties. Other restrictions involved undue government influence and abuse of power—often carried out through the NIS—that labeled political opponents and critics as national security liabilities and actively discriminated against them while rewarding the administration’s allies.
The number of prosecutions under the NSL for “expressing North Korean sympathies” online went up from 5 in 2008 to 82 in 2010, and Amnesty International noted that in 2012, 41 individuals were “either detained for questioning or charged under national security provisions in freedom of expression cases…some involving online activity.”206 In 2011, police searched Park Jung-geun’ studio and interrogated him on five occasions due to Park re-tweeting content from North Korea’s official Twitter account. Park relayed he had done so to make fun of the North Korean regime but was arrested in January 2012, imprisoned for a month before being granted bail, then sentenced to a suspended 10-month jail sentence in November 2012.207 “Prosecutors charged that, regardless of his intention, his account had served as a vehicle for spreading the North’s propaganda.”208
Under the Lee Myung-bak administration, censorship—especially of the internet— went up.209 During this period, Reporters Without Borders’ “Enemies of the Internet”
206 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2013: South Korea Country Profile”; Sang-hun Choe, “Sometimes, It’s a Crime to Praise Pyongyang,” New York Times, January 5, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/world/asia/06iht-korea06.html?pagewanted=all; Seok Ahn, “11 Online North Korean Sympathizers Arrested. 5 Times More Social Networking Accounts Blocked [for Violating the National Security Act] Over the Past Year” [in Korean] Seoul Shinmun, May 18, 2012, http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20120518011015; Amnesty International, “Republic of Korea,” Amnesty International Report 2013: The State of the World’s Human Rights, http://files.amnesty.org/air13/AmnestyInternational_AnnualReport2013_complete_en.pdf, 150–152. 207 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2013: South Korea Country Profile”; Paula Hancocks, “South Korean ‘Joke’ May Lead to Prison,” CNN, July 4, 2012, http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/03/world/ asia/south-korea-north-joke/index.html. 208 “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2013,” Freedom House, Accessed August 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/south-korea. 209 “Freedom in the World 2013: South Korea Profile,” Freedom House, Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2013/south-korea
48 report identified the Republic of Korea as “under surveillance.”210 Freedom House noted in 2011 that “particularly evident in South Korea” was censorship entailing “technical filtering of websites related to North Korea, and the administrative deletion of certain content on the orders of the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC).”211
In 2012, Freedom House observed, “recent years…have been marked by increased policing of the online environment. The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, international journalists, and human rights groups have voiced concerns that the space for free expression in the country has been diminishing since 2008.…Censorship and detentions related to dissemination of content sympathetic to North Korea or critical of the current administration continued, and in some aspects increased.”212 It is significant that freedom of expression has declined since 2008 in that Lee, a conservative, was inaugurated in February of that year; he was preceded by a decade of progressive rule. Freedom House’s 2013 report on South Korea additionally noted that “the United Nations Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International have called for the [NSL] to be scaled back or repealed, insisting that its broadly written provisions are being abused to silence political opposition.”213
210 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2013: South Korea Profile.” 211 “Freedom on the Net 2011: South Korea Country Profile,” Freedom House, Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2011/south-korea. 212 “Freedom on the Net 2012: South Korea Country Profile,” Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2012/south-korea.; Frank La Rue, “Full Text of Press Statement Delivered by UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, After the Conclusion of His Visit to the Republic of Korea,” United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, May 17, 2010, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/opinion/docs/ROK-Pressstatement17052010.pdf; Chico Harlan, “In S. Korea, a shrinking space for speech,” The Washington Post, December 22, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-s-korea-a-shrinking-space-for- speech/2011/12/21/gIQAmAHgBP_story.html; Reporters Without Borders, Internet Enemies Report 2012 (Paris: Reporters Without Borders, March 12, 2012), http://en.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/rapport- internet2012_ang.pdf; Irene Khan, “Statement by Irene Khan, Amnesty International Secretary General, on the Completion of Her Visit to South Korea,” Amnesty International, November 24, 2009, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA25/013/2009/en/81c8df37-c1d9-4d49-aa8c- 825cd7ce9203/asa250132009en.pdf. 213 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2013: South Korea Profile.”
49 The OpenNet Initiative determined in 2008 and 2010 that the ROK extensively blocked websites with North Korean propaganda or content calling for reunification of the Korean peninsula.214 Because of national security concerns, it is within the purview of two of the ROK’s security services—the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the Korean National Police Agency (NPA)—to request the KCSC block websites that are deemed to be in violation of the National Security Law (NSL), under which content that “praises, promotes, and glorifies North Korea” is deemed “illegal information.”215 A prominent example of a website that was blocked based on such a request is the DPRK’s official Twitter account “@uriminzok.”216
“The KCSC process has been criticized by civil society groups for its vaguely defined standards and the wide discretionary power that this single entity possesses to determine what information should be deleted.”217 Additionally, problematic was the fact that the KCSC would not notify the originators of censored content of the KCSC’s determination, and that these individuals were unable to contest the decision to “defend their right to publish.”218 “In many cases, the KCSC blocks entire blogs, though only a small portion of posts are considered to be problematic. All this has contributed to an atmosphere of self-censorship, particularly on topics related to North Korea.”219
214 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2012: South Korea Country Profile”; OpenNet Initiative, “Country Profile: South Korea,” December 26, 2010, http://opennet.net/research/profiles/south-korea. 215 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2012: South Korea Country Profile.” 216 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2012: South Korea Country Profile.” 217 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2011: South Korea Country Profile”; Jillian York and Rainey Reitman, “In South Korea, the Only Thing Worse Than Online Censorship is Secret Online Censorship,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, September 6, 2011, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/ south-korea-only-thing-worse-online-censorship; Jeong-hwan Lee, “A private organisation under the president? The KCSC’s structural irony” [in Korean] Media Today, September 14, 2011, http://www.mediatoday.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=97350. 218 “Freedom on the Net 2015: South Korea Country Profile,” Freedom House, Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2015/south-korea. 219 “Freedom on the Net 2013: South Korea Country Profile,” Freedom House, Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2013/south-korea.
50 A piece by Media Today220 entitled, “A private organization under the president? The KCSC’s structural irony,” discusses the KCSC’s set up and highlights concerns regarding its partiality based on presidential influence.221 Media Today observes that the 9 members comprising the KCSC’s review committee, to include the chairman, are all presidential appointees.222 It also asserts that while the KCSC describes itself as an independent organization, in practice, it is subordinate to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), an administrative organization that answers to the president.223 This becomes evident when considering the following: the KCSC is required to provide the KCC with the petition an individual whose content is flagged for censoring puts forth as a rebuttal; complaints regarding censoring impositions are filed with the KCC versus the KCSC; the KCSC implements censoring determinations made by the KCC.224
Upon coming into office, the Lee administration overhauled the existing regulators of information and communications technology (ICT), combining them into the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), which it “tasked with overseeing both telecommunications and broadcasting to improve policy coherence.”225 Like the KCSC, the KCC is also a body of concern with regard to freedoms restrictions. According to the KCC, it “is responsible for regulating broadcasting and communications services, protecting their users, and dealing with other matters required for maintaining the
220 Media Today is a South Korean media source that describes itself as being dedicated to “persistently digging into the distorted coverage and blind spots of the mainstream media” (Reference “About the company,” Media Today, http://www.mediatoday.co.kr/com/com-1.html (in Korean). 221 Lee, “A private organization under the president? The KCSC’s structural irony.” 222 Lee, “A private organization under the president?”; “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile,” Freedom House, Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom- net/2016/south-korea. 223 Lee, “A private organization under the President?” 224 Lee, “A private organization under the President?” 225 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2012: South Korea Country Profile”; Jong Sung Hwang and Sang-hyun Park, “Republic of Korea,” in Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2009–2010 (London: Sage Publications, 2009), 234–240.
51 independence of broadcasting services.”226 However, the president directly appoints two of the five commissioners who lead the KCC, one of whom is the chairman,227 raising concerns regarding how independent the KCC is in actuality.228 The National Assembly nominates the other commissioners, who are then appointed by the President.229 Haggard and You argue, “this arrangement allows for the possibility that the KCC will be completely dominated by the party in power and can thus influence the media through a variety of channels, including licensing and personnel decisions.”230 Freedom House notes that “the KCC has struggled to earn credibility as its first chairman Choi See-joong was a close associate of the president, causing some observers to view the restructuring as a government effort to tighten control over the media and ICT sectors.”231
It should be noted that the timeframe in which Lee was in power happened to correspond with an increase in internet access and usage; Freedom House observed in 2011 that “As internet access has spread, online communications have become an increasingly integral part of South Korean society.”232 One could argue that it may be the case that the increase in censorship is simply the consequence of the rapid increase in internet content combined with uncertainty regarding how to manage this new phenomenon, and that the prior progressive administration would have engaged in a similar degree of censorship under the same circumstances.
226 Overview,” Korea Communications Commission, Accessed August 01, 2019, https://eng.kcc.go.kr/user.do?page=E01010100&dc=E01010100. 227 Overview,” Korea Communications Commission. 228 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2013: South Korea Country Profile.” 229 “Overview,” Korea Communications Commission. 230 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea, 175.” 231 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2012: South Korea Country Profile,” citing Ji-nam Kang, “Who’s Who Behind Lee Myung-bak: Choi See-joong the Chairman of the KCC (Appointed),” [in Korean] Shindonga (583, 2008), 48–49, http://shindonga.donga.com/docs/magazine/shin/2008/04/12/200804120500019/200804120500019_1.html 232 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2011: South Korea Country Profile.”
52 Another factor to take into consideration is the level of the legitimate threat from North Korea. It is conceivable that there may have been a higher North Korean threat under the Lee administration, and that this, rather than conservative policies and tendencies, contributed to a higher degree of censorship and NSL crackdowns. Compiling quantitative data on the level of the North Korean threat using North Korean provocations as a proxy, however, yielded the observation that the Noh Moo-hyun administration and the Lee Myung-bak administration dealt with an equal threat level (see Table 1).
In order to determine the legitimate threat level from North Korea, I used data from Beyond Parallel, “a nonpartisan and authoritative analytic vehicle for delivering greater clarity and understanding to policymakers, strategists, and opinion leaders about Korean unification” run by the Center for Strategic & International Studies.233 Beyond Parallel created a color-coded chart by month from 1990 to 2016, with “a darker shade of red represent [ing] a greater number of provocations by North Korea.” I assigned numbers to each shade, with the lightest being 1 and the darkest being 4, then calculated the totals per administration. I included provocations from a year prior to the start of the administration until the end of their term to account for the threat level the administration inherited coming into office.
233“25 Years of Negotiations and Provocations: North Korea and the United States,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, Accessed July 20, 2019, https://beyondparallel.csis.org. 53 Table 1. DPRK Provocations under Noh Moo-hyun vs. Lee Myung-bak
Administration Noh Moo-hyun Lee Myung-bak Political leaning Left Right Year prior to term to end of term 03 - 25 Feb 08 07 - 25 Feb 13 DPRK provocations by year 11 3 1 7 1 5 1 1 3 3 3 1 Total 20 20
See Table 2 and Table 3 at the end of this chapter for the complete data set broken down by year and administration.
Lee’s government impeded freedom of the press by exerting influence on major media companies, to include replacing existing heads with individuals who had close ties to Lee. Mainstream media reports resultantly fell in line with Lee’s policies, and journalists expressing dissenting views faced punitive measures. Freedom House notes that “since Lee’s inauguration, former presidential aides and advisers have been appointed to key positions at a number of major media companies over the objections of journalists who have sought to maintain those broadcasters’ editorial independence.” 234 Haggard and You observe that under the leadership of Choi, who had strong ties to Lee, “the heads of various media outlets, including Korea Broadcasting Service (KBS) and Yonhap Television Network (YTN), were replaced by supporters of President Lee Myung-bak. Under the Lee administration, more than 180 journalists were penalised—either through dismissal or other sanctions—for writing critical reports about government policies or advocating press freedom.”235 Freedom House’s rating for “Freedom of the Media” in
234 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2011: South Korea Country Profile.” 235 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 175.
54 South Korea in 2011 “declined from Free to Partly Free to reflect an increase in official censorship…as well as the government’s attempt to influence media outsets’ news and information content.”236 In January 2017, Kim Jae-chul, a former chief of South Korea’s Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) during the Lee administration, was indicted for charges ranging from abuse of power to labor union law violation.237 Yonhap News Agency reported that prior NIS director Won Sei-hoon was charged with “[colluding] with Kim in a scheme to drive out those critical of the Lee Myung-bak administration.”238 Kim was “alleged to have scrapped programs critical of the [Lee Myung-bak] government, sacked critical reporters and producers or transferred them to irrelevant duties and kicked liberal-leaning celebrities out of TV programs.” 239 Prosecutors concluded in their investigation that the NIS had a plan entitled “Strategies and Measures for the Normalization of the MBC” that discussed methods through which to “get rid of left- leaning personnel and problematic programs and marginalize the labor union,”240 which Kim proceeded to carry out.241 In late 2017, it was revealed that the NIS had also created a similar, more extensive plan in 2010 for the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) entitled, “A Proposal for Replacement of Personnel after the Reorganization of KBS.” Hankyoreh and the Korea Herald reported that the plan stated individuals with “leftist tendencies”
236 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2011: South Korea Country Profile.” 237 “Prosecution indicts former MBC chief, ex-NIS director,” Yonhap News Agency, January 17, 2018, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20180117012300315. 238 “Prosecution indicts former MBC chief, ex-NIS director.” 239 “Prosecution indicts former MBC chief, ex-NIS director.” 240 Da-sol Kim, “What NIS is accused of doing,” Korea Herald, November 14, 2017, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20171114000943. 241 “Prosecution indicts former MBC chief, ex-NIS director.”; “MBC under investigation,” The Korea Times, October 30, 2017, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2019/04/251_238460.html.
55 were to be passed over in hiring decisions.242 These plans were drafted by an NIS task force “assigned to devise ways to eliminate ‘deep-rooted vices.’”243
In September 2017, the NIS Committee for Reform and Development discovered that “a number of officials at the Blue House,244 including the Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs, the Senior Secretary for Public Relations and the Secretary for Executive Management, gave orders [to the NIS] in Aug. 2010 to ‘determine the current activities of left-leaning celebrities and matters to consider.’”245 The NIS provided this information via its daily briefing to the president, along with tailored briefings to the Blue House to address this topic.246 The Hankyoreh reported that the committee also found that then NIS director Won Sei-hoon “frequently ordered the NIS to take steps to counter and marginalize influential figures and groups in the fields of art and culture,” stating that these individuals were “besmirching the honor of the president with ‘verbal terrorism’” and “spreading mistrust by producing left-leaning videos.”247 Measures to accomplish this ranged from tax audits of these individuals’ entertainment companies to having their nominations for awards and casting in programs rescinded.248
Journalists protested government infringement upon freedom of the media in 2012, marking the first of such strikes since democratization.249 In response to this restrictive environment, “a variety of alternative and activist media outlets developed online,
242 Young-ji Seo, “NIS found to have conducted surveillance of MBC, KBS,” Hankyoreh, September 18, 2017, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/811480.html; Kim, “What NIS is accused of doing.” 243 Seo, “NIS found to have conducted surveillance of MBC, KBS.” 244 The Blue House is the Republic of Korea’s White House equivalent. 245 Bo-hyeop Kim, “More NIS abuses surface during leadership tenure of Won Sei-hoon,” Hankyoreh, September 12, 2017, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/810663.html. 246 Kim, “More NIS abuses surface during leadership tenure of Won Sei-hoon.” 247 Kim, “More NIS abuses surface during leadership tenure of Won Sei-hoon.” 248 Kim, “More NIS abuses surface during leadership tenure of Won Sei-hoon.” 249 “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2013,” Freedom House, Accessed August 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2012/south-korea.
56 including Newstapa, a user-funded investigative journalism platform.” After Newstapa reported on key details regarding an election rigging scandal that reflected negatively on conservative intelligence officials and politicians in 2013, these independent media outlets became targets of suppression under the next, also conservative, administration, which attempted to discredit these outlets and put legal barriers in place to make their continued operation difficult.250
The Lee administration actively channeled the false narrative painting its critics as pro-North during a high-visibility investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan, a ROK corvette, restricting freedom of speech. “A number of experts, prominent intellectuals, and even lawmakers were accused of violating the NSL” after they questioned the results of the investigation.251 Due to what they saw as inconsistencies in the evidence, the accused had taken issue with the conclusion that a North Korean torpedo attack was to blame.252 The prosecution launched investigations against these individuals, but were unable to indict them.253 Under the authoritarian system, the regime’s conflation of its critics with North Korean sympathizers guaranteed successful prosecution; under South Korea’s consolidated democracy, however, this was no longer the case. Prosecution under defamation laws, on the other hand, proved to be more successful. In “The Cheonan Incident and the Declining Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” Jong-sung You asserts “criminal defamation became a primary legal tool to suppress critics of the Lee government’s policies. “254
A cursory observation of defamation laws being levied against critics of the president and presidential influence over the media may appear to be problematic for freedom of expression and the press but unrelated to North Korea; however, these restrictions become relevant when considering historical precedent from the ROK’s
250 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2015: South Korea Country Profile.” 251 Jong-sung You, “The Cheonan Incident and the Declining Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” Asia Perspective 39 (2015), 204. 252 You, “The Cheonan Incident and the Declining Freedom of Expression in South Korea.” 253 You, “The Cheonan Incident and the Declining Freedom of Expression in South Korea.” 254 You, “The Cheonan Incident and the Declining Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 215.
57 authoritarian period and how those accused of defamation are characterized. Under his military dictatorship, Park Chung-hee “made criticism of the regime a violation of national security laws” under Emergency Decree #9.255 Though the decree itself did not survive democratization, it appears that the narrative linking critics of the regime to subversion and North Korean sympathies remained a justification for freedoms restrictions. The government and the conservative media mainly used the rhetoric of national security to denounce the critics—calling them pro-North Korea or antistate—though actual prosecution was on the ground that questioning the government’s investigations amounted to [defamation].”256
Civil liberties also declined on the basis of real and manufactured national security concerns under the Lee administration. Pointing to the salience of the North Korean nuclear threat—which he attributed to being enabled by the Sunshine Policy of his progressive predecessors—as justification, Lee “[reinforced] the surveillance of subversive, pro-North Korea internal enemies.”257 In 2008, the NIS established the Joint Interrogation Center (JIC) to screen North Korean defectors for indications of being North Korean spies.258 Closed interrogations occurred259 without independent oversight.260 In 2010, “amid fear that North Korea was planting spies among migrants bound for the South,”261 the law was
255 Easy and McCormack, “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare , 83–4; Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police, 160. 256 You, “The Cheonan Incident and the Declining Freedom of Expression in South Korea.” 257 Hyesoo Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 31, no. 3 (September 2018), 456–457. 258 Chidong Lee, “S. Korea reforming NK defector interrogation system,” Yonhap News Agency, July 28, 2014, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20140728007800315. 259 Lee, “S. Korea reforming NK defector interrogation system.” 260 Sang-hun Choe, “Convictions Deal Blow to South Korean Intelligence Service,” New York Times, October 28, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/world/asia/convictions-deal-blow-to-south- korean-intelligence-service.html. 261 Choe, “Convictions Deal Blow to South Korean Intelligence Service.”
58 altered to enable the JIC to hold and question North Korean defectors for up to six months, doubling the length previously permitted.262
It should be noted that there is a precedent for and genuine concern that North Korean defectors may be spies, particularly given the North Korean intelligence services’ modus operandi of using a defector’s family as leverage to force cooperation. 263 Nevertheless, the JIC and the NIS’ expanded authorities increased the potential for the curtailment of civil liberties in the pursuit of national security. The center and the agency were embroiled in a scandal in 2014 when agents were discovered to have falsified documents to cinch the conviction of a defector they accused of espionage, and alleged to have coerced the defendant’s sister to confess that she and her brother were spies while interrogating her at the JIC in 2012.264 Amidst public outcry, the NIS renamed the JIC to the Center for Protection of North Korean Refugees and ended closed-door interrogations “in a bid to enhance transparency and protect the human rights of defectors.”265
In alignment with the ideology of the New Right, the Lee administration put a halt to investigations into freedoms abuses—often perpetrated in the name of national security—under past authoritarian regimes. Under the progressive administration of Roh Moo-Hyun (Lee’s predecessor), the legislature created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).266 As described by the commission’s first president, Father Song Gi- Im, the TRC served to “investigate and find out the truth and take necessary measures to bring about reconciliation in [cases] relating to…human rights violations and politically fabricated trials during authoritarian rule.” 267 Citing de Ceuster, Doucette and Koo note that “after his election…President Lee appointed a New Right affiliated scholar, Lee
262 Choe, “Convictions Deal Blow to South Korean Intelligence Service.” 263 “‘Spy Nation’ film alleges abuse of North Korean asylum seekers,” Global Security, September 15, 2016, https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/rok/2016/rok-160915-voa01.htm. 264 “‘Spy Nation’ film alleges abuse of North Korean asylum seekers,” Global Security. 265 Lee, “S. Korea reforming NK defector interrogation system.” 266 Hanley, “Transitional Justice in South Korea,” 156–7. 267 Hanley, “Transitional Justice in South Korea,” 157.
59 Young-jo, as the commission’s president, who then publicly declared that the commission’s work had been a waste of money”268 and cut its funds and investigative authorities.269 Lee Young-jo proceeded to dismantle the TRC in 2010,270 and additionally “put a stop to circulation of materials critical of past military dictatorships produced under President Roh.”271
The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK), established under political dissident-turned-president Kim Dae-jung to address human rights abuses and issues related to the ROK government, was relegated to a similar fate. 272 Amnesty International reported that “the [NHRCK] was downsized by 21 per cent, which led to a significant reduction in the capacity and effectiveness of the organization and undermined its independence and credibility.”273 A few months following Lee’s inauguration, the Commissioner of the NHRCK resigned.274 In his farewell address, he criticized the Lee administration for restructuring the commission and asserted, “the current administration has been engulfed by the notion that the NHRCK is part of the legacy of a left wing administration, and has not shown any intention of communicating nor any ability for improving human rights.”275
268 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 215 citing K. De Ceuster, “When History is Made: History, Memory and the Politics of Remembrance. in Contemporary Korea.” Korean Histories 2 no. 1 (2010): 13–33. 269 Paul Hanley, “Transitional Justice in South Korea: One Country’s Restless Search for Truth and Reconciliation,” University of Pennsylvania East Asia Law Review 9, no. 2 (2014), 161. 270 Hanley, “Transitional Justice in South Korea,” 161. 271 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 215 272 “Blue House instituting measures to restore role and function of Human Rights Commission,” Hankyoreh, May 26, 2017, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/PRINT/796393.html. 273 “Republic of Korea: Submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review, October – November 2012,” Amnesty International, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/20000/asa250012012en.pdf, 4. 274 “Blue House instituting measures to restore role and function of Human Rights Commission.” 275 “Blue House instituting measures to restore role and function of Human Rights Commission.”
60 Under Lee’s tenure, the NIS, the Ministry of National Defense’s Cyberwarfare Command, the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, and the Consultative Council for State Development and Future Education all secretly conducted activities to sway the populace in favor of then presidential-candidate Park Geun-hye. Doucette and Koo state, “the electoral interference carried out by these agencies consisted of the expansive use of popular internet forums and social networking sites to create and circulate messages intended to discredit key opposition figures as chongbuk chwap’a: a term that is commonly translated as ‘pro-North leftists.’ The overall online message from these state organs was that South Korea required defending from those who collaborate with the regime in Pyongyang to undermine the nation-state from within.”276
The NIS conducted covert, cyberwarfare operations designed to influence domestic elections in favor of Park Geun-Hye and other conservatives,277 harkening back to the narrative labeling progressive dissidents as pro-North communists formulated during the authoritarian period. Progressive politicians alleged in December 2012 that a NIS agent had used 40 separate accounts to undermine support for presidential candidates other than Park Geun-hye, the conservative politician who ultimately won the 2012 presidential election.278
Doucette and Koo note that “by December 2013, it was revealed that the NIS had produced, over a period of two years, some 1,900 online posts and approximately 22 million tweets with political or election-related content—roughly 30% of all election- related content that was generated on Twitter.” 279 In 2017, after Park Geun-hye’s impeachment due to a separate scandal involving corruption and abuse of power and under
276 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 209. 277 “South Korea spy agency admits trying to rig 2012 presidential election,” Guardian, August 4, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/04/south-koreas-spy-agency-admits-trying-rig- election-national-intelligence-service-2012. 278 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” 279 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 207–8.
61 the progressive Moon Jae-in administration, the NIS admitted to rigging the 2012 presidential election and two national assembly elections.280 The NIS’ internal report of investigation revealed that for two years leading up to the 2012 elections, up to thirty teams were tasked to write positive online posts about conservative politicians and “[spread] pro- government opinions and [suppress] anti-government views, branding them as attempts by pro-North Korean forces to disrupt state affairs.”281 Additionally, NIS psyops officials attempted to sway ROK voters towards Park Geun-Hye and away from progressive candidate Moon Jae-in through posting comments disparaging Moon on social media and news websites.282 Park ending up winning the presidency by a small margin.
In addition to electoral manipulation, the NIS “carried out psychological operations offline by providing funds to the Consultative Council for State Development and Future Education, an organization created by Park Seung-chun, former head of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs” in 2010 to educate individuals in the reserves.283 The Consultative Council was headquartered in Seoul, with 11 additional branches across the country.284 The NIS provided the branches approximately 50 million won (the equivalent of U.S. $44,000) annually beginning in 2010 in order to fund its rent and enough to pay for one employee’s salary.285 The NIS handled the majority of the council’s operations and set the agenda; according to Hankyoreh reporting, a former NIS employee stated, “NIS officials selected national security lecturers for the council…and arranged a schedule of national security lectures for students and soldiers in the reserves.”286 It also paid between
280 “South Korea spy agency admits trying to rig 2012 presidential election.” 281 “South Korea spy agency admits trying to rig 2012 presidential election.” 282 “South Korea spy agency admits trying to rig 2012 presidential election.” 283 Young-ji Seo, “NIS secretly provided funds to conservative public outreach organization,” Hankyoreh, August 22, 2017, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/807856.html. 284 Seo, “NIS secretly provided funds to conservative public outreach organization.” 285 Seo, “NIS secretly provided funds to conservative public outreach organization.” 286 Seo, “NIS secretly provided funds to conservative public outreach organization.”
62 200,000 to 300,000 won (equivalent to U.S. $180 to $270) for each lecture.287 All of the funds the NIS provided were pulled from its special activity budget, which had also been used to finance its operations to manipulate elections.288
The lecturers made statements that perpetuated the false narrative linking those on the left with communism and North Korea, asserting, for instance, “that Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun’s [progressives] in presidential elections were examples of successful political provocations by North Korea and that the candlelit rallies over mad cow disease had been provoked by North Korean sympathizers.” 289 The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs under Park Seung-chun also attempted to indoctrinate reservists with this narrative. Park was appointed the Minister of Patriots and Veterans Affairs in 2011, a year after setting up the Consultative Council.290 In 2012, the political opposition denounced the ministry for circulating a DVD that “praised former president Park Chung-hee and denigrated members of the democratization movement as being ‘North Korean sympathizers.’” 291 The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans’ Affairs also utilized a textbook that described progressive parties as threats to national security for national security training, which it provided to 227,525 individuals during the timeframe that presidential candidates were campaigning for the 2012 election. 292 In January 2018, under the
287 Seo, “NIS secretly provided funds to conservative public outreach organization.” 288 Seo, “NIS secretly provided funds to conservative public outreach organization.” 289 Seo, “NIS secretly provided funds to conservative public outreach organization.” 290 Seo, “NIS secretly provided funds to conservative public outreach organization.” 291 Seo, “NIS secretly provided funds to conservative public outreach organization.” 292 “Illegal Intervention by State Agencies in the Presidential Election,” People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, December 11, 2013, http://www.peoplepower21.org/English/1128957.; Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 208.
63 progressive Moon Jae-in administration, Park and former NIS director Won Sei-hoon were indicted for violating the NIS act by facilitating illegal politicization.293
In addition to the NIS, the Ministry of National Defense’s Cyber Warfare Command also worked to influence South Korea’s by-election in 2011 and general and presidential elections in 2012 in favor of President Park’s conservative, Saenuri Party via internet posts.294 Cyber warfare agents authored twenty posts a day on average a month prior to the presidential election in 2012.295 Posts typically consisted of comments that painted Park Geun-hye in a very positive light and derided her rivals.296 Posts about Moon Jae-in, the progressive candidate, characterized him as a national security threat.297 For instance, one post read, “If you let Moon Jae-in fool you, the floodgates will open to the North.”298 Between November 2011 and October 2013, Cyber Command’s psychological operations division posted 12,844 political comments favoring conservative candidates and lambasting the opposition on the internet.299
2. Park Geun-hye Administration (February 2013–March 2017)
Freedom of expression restrictions, heightened media control, and civil liberty violations invoking the threat of North Korea as justification continued under the Park administration. A number of Park’s appointees were individuals who had been involved in
293 “‘NIS running the Consultative Council for State Development and Future Education’ Park Seung- chun, former head of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, and Won Sei-hun Indicted” [in Korean] Yonhap News, January 31, 2018, https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20180131187800004. 294 Hyun-woog Noh and Hwan-bong Jung, “Cyber Command repeatedly interfered on behalf of ruling party,” Hankyoreh, November 20, 2014, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/665362.html. 295 Noh and Jung, “Cyber Command repeatedly interfered on behalf of ruling party.” 296 Noh and Jung, “Cyber Command repeatedly interfered on behalf of ruling party.” 297 Noh and Jung, “Cyber Command repeatedly interfered on behalf of ruling party.”; Tae-woo Park, “Former Cyber Command spy-ops head sentenced to prison for 2012 election interference,” Hankyoreh, May 16, 2015, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/691507.html. 298 Noh and Jung, “Cyber Command repeatedly interfered on behalf of ruling party.” 299 Park, “Former Cyber Command spy-ops head sentenced to prison for 2012 election interference.”
64 suppressing political dissent under prior authoritarian regimes, and were placed in key positions that enabled them to do so under her administration as well. Park’s associates and the intelligence apparatus actively worked to neutralize criticism of the Park administration, channeling the narrative that critics of the government were subversive and threatened national security.
Freedom House notes, “Observers say that freedom of expression, both online and offline, has been undermined since the conservative party returned to power in 2008. Three UN Special Rapporteurs shared concerns after visiting the country in 2010, 2013, and 2016, respectively, saying that the government’s new laws, along with more restrictive interpretations and application of existing laws, affect citizens’ rights to free speech, assembly, and association.”300 Freedom House observed that “independence of broadcast media companies that had been significantly degraded during former president Lee’s tenure remained a concern in 2013,” and that “government influence over government-funded broadcast media companies and media management’s political interference in reporting” remained a serious concern.301
Like Lee, “Park appointed a close aide as the new KCC chairman, perpetuating the impression that the supposedly independent regulator is under the president’s direct control.”302 Under Park, the KSCS came under fire for “rubber-stamping” requests from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the police to censor internet content on the basis of national security, which went up from 700 in 2013 to 1,996 in the timeframe
300 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile,” citing Frank La Rue, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression” (A/HRC/17/27/Add.2), 2011, http://bit.ly/1QgytnP; Margaret Sekaggya, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders” (A/HRC/25/55/Add.1), 2013, http://bit.ly/1oJBN1t; Maina Kiai, “Statement by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association at the conclusion of his visit to the Republic of Korea,” 2016, http://bit.ly/1RfNJiy; see also Amnesty International, “Annual Report 2015/16 – South Korea,” 2016, http://bit.ly/1DkoIB4. 301 “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2014,” Freedom House, Accessed August 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2014/south-korea. 302 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2013: South Korea Country Profile.”
65 between January to August of 2016.303 In March 2016, following a nine-day filibuster by 38 members of the opposition, conservative lawmakers pushed through an antiterrorism law that expanded legal authorities for the NIS, enabling it “to access private communication records and censor online content without judicial oversight during terrorism investigations.”304 Goedde and Kim, writing from a legal perspective, argue that “the discrepancy between the international discourse on terrorism…and the Korean context, where the North Korean threat and pro-North Korean sentiments are the main concerns, reveals the arbitrary exploitation of international discourse on terrorism for political purposes such as suppressing dissent critical of the administration in power.”305
In 2013, Newstapa, an independent investigative journalism platform funded by viewers, broke the story of the NIS meddling in domestic elections in an attempt to provide conservative politicians—to include Park when she was a presidential candidate—with an advantage.306 The KCC decried Newstapa and other independent online news outlets as “not real news,” and, according to Freedom House, “[warned] their owners not to report on issues outside their remit.”307 In 2015, these independent sources of media were targeted with legislation that made it illegal for them to register themselves as news outlets unless they had a minimum of six fulltime employees in an amendment to the Newspaper Act. 308 The purported reasoning for this amendment was to resolve the issue of “substandard” internet news.309 Freedom House noted, “the Korea Press Foundation
303 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2017: South Korea Country Profile.” 304 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” 305 Patricia Goedde and Weonwu Kim, “Balancing the Act on Anti-Terrorism in South Korea,” Pacific Basin Law Journal 35 no. 67 (2017), 85. 306 “South Korean Authorities Discredit Dissenting Voices as ‘Not-Real’ News,” Global Voices, January 2, 2017, https://globalvoices.org/2014/01/02/south-korean-authorities-discredit-dissenting-voices- as-not-real-news/. 307 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2015: South Korea Country Profile” citing Yoo Eun Lee, “South Korean authorities discredit dissenting voices as ‘not-real’ news,” Global Voices, January 2, 2014, http://bit.ly/1cpE2sy. 308 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” 309 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.”
66 estimated that this could cause at least one third of existing agencies to close down, including most citizen journalism sites.”310 Gobal news reported that during the same period of time in which the government instituted this amendment adversely impacting independent media outlets such as Gobal news, it was rewarding television stations operated by major newspapers with conservative leanings who supported government policies.311 Critics denounced the government’s actions as amounting to “muzzling media critical of the government” and drew a parallel to the Chun Doo-hwan administration’s repression of media dissent during the authoritarian period.312 In addition, the “chair of the commission [under the Park administration was] Park Hyo-chong, a key figure in the country’s neoconservative movement.”313
In 2017, it was discovered that the Park administration had maintained a blacklist of close to 10,000 artists.314 Individuals were subject to blacklisting for being critical of Park315 and being on the left of the political spectrum.316 Those blacklisted were left off of “government-controlled support programs.” 317 The presiding judge over the investigation into the black list, Hwang Byeong-heon, described implementation of punitive measures against blacklisted individuals as having been carried out “secretly, but
310 Freedom Hcouse, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” 311 “South Korean Authorities Discredit Dissenting Voices as ‘Not-Real’ News,” Global Voices; Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” 312 “South Korean Authorities Discredit Dissenting Voices as ‘Not-Real’ News,” Global Voices. 313 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” 314 Sang-Hun Choe, “South Korea’s Blacklist of Artists Adds to Outrage Over Presidential Scandal,” New York Times, January 12, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/world/asia/south-korea- president-park-blacklist-artists.html. 315 Sang-Hun Choe, “6 Ex-Officials in South Korea are Sentenced for Blacklisting Artists,” New York Times, July 27, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/world/asia/south-korea-park-aides-artists- blacklist.html. 316 Nam-il Kim, “Government blacklist stretched beyond culture, across South Korean society,” Hankyoreh, February 1, 2017, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/780870.html. 317 Choe, “6 Ex-Officials in South Korea are Sentenced for Blacklisting Artists.”
67 persistently.”318 At the center of the blacklisting scandal was Kim Ki-choon, who had served as Park’s chief of staff from 2013 - 2015. The senior presidential secretary for civil affairs at the time, Kim Young-han, recorded in his journal that Kim Ki-choon directed cabinet members to “monitor jonbuk [(pro-North)] networks in their cultural and art circles” and stated a “combative response” to North Korean sympathizers was needed.319 “[Kim] was convicted of ordering presidential staff members and Culture Ministry officials to draw up the blacklist and of lying about it during parliamentary hearings.” Kim’s actions harkened back to the authoritarian period, when artists critical of the government were blacklisted and labeled as communist. In fact, Kim was directly involved in repressing dissidents under the military dictatorship of Park Chung-Hee, Park Geun-hye’s father.320 Kim was a “senior anti-communist investigator at the Korean Central Intelligence Agency [KCIA], the government’s main intelligence body in the 1970s [which] often framed dissidents…with charges extracted through torture that they were communists or sympathetic toward North Korea.”321 He additionally was involved in writing the martial law that justified the continuation of Park Chung-hee’s rule and “allowed [Park Chung- hee] to monitor artists and ban subversive works.”322
When the Republic of Korea democratized in 1987, it did so in a top-down fashion, with the old guard remaining in place as the conservative party. Kim Ki-choon is a prime example of this dynamic; after his time with the KCIA, he was appointed as a justice minister and served three terms in the National Assembly (the ROK’s legislative body)
318 Choe, “South Korea’s Blacklist of Artists Adds to Outrage Over Presidential Scandal.” 319 Minkyu Sung, “Surveillance and Anti-Communist Authoritarianism in South Korea,” Surveillance & Society 15 no. 3/4 (2017), 489.; “South Korea’s ministry of culture is accused of blacklisting 9,500 artists,” Economist, January 28, 2017, https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/01/28/south-koreas-ministry- of-culture-is-accused-of-blacklisting-9500-artists. 320 Choe, “6 Ex-Officials in South Korea are Sentenced for Blacklisting Artists”; “South Korea’s ministry of culture is accused of blacklisting 9,500 artists.” 321 Choe, “6 Ex-Officials in South Korea are Sentenced for Blacklisting Artists.” 322 “South Korea’s ministry of culture is accused of blacklisting 9,500 artists.”
68 under conservative administrations.323 He was Park Geun-hye’s aide beginning in 2006 and was selected to be her chief of staff in 2013 after she became president.324 According to the New York Times, a special prosecutor working on the blacklisting investigation relayed that the Park administration “ensured that pro-government civic groups received special favors…It asked the Federation of Korean Industries, which lobbies on behalf of Samsung and other big businesses, to provide $5.9 million for those groups between 2014 and 2016…Some of those groups, such as the right-wing Korea Parent Federation, used to hold noisy protests in central Seoul denouncing Ms. Park’s critics as communists.”325
Kim’s background and role in suppressing critics of the administration was not an isolated case. Doucette and Koo observe that “Park’s appointments favoured remnants of the old military dictatorships and her administration has sought to recuperate the old guard and cast greater doubt upon the legacy of democratic forces…in the place of popular movements as historical agents of South Korean democratisation, prominent conservatives in Park’s administration position former dictatorial regimes as establishing the necessary structural features for a healthy democracy…and, in contrast, portray progressive social movements and democratic political forces as a threat to public security, and ultimately, democracy itself.”326 For instance, Hwang Woo-yea was an associate judge who oversaw trials that found political activists who made confessions under torture guilty of the NSL under Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship; he later became the floor leader of Park’ Geun-hye’s Saenuri party before his appointment as Minister of Education and deputy prime minister.327 Other prominent positions such as the Minister of Justice and Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court were filled with individuals whose work as prosecutors
323 Choe, “6 Ex-Officials in South Korea are Sentenced for Blacklisting Artists.” 324 Choe, “6 Ex-Officials in South Korea are Sentenced for Blacklisting Artists.” 325 Choe, “6 Ex-Officials in South Korea are Sentenced for Blacklisting Artists.” 326 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 205. 327 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 212.
69 during the authoritarian period entailed freedoms abuses by means of unfair trials for dissidents accused of violating the NSL.328
A few months into the Park administration, allegations regarding the NIS conducting an extensive online operation to influence the public in favor of conservative administrations while denigrating progressive politicians as pro-North sympathizers were found to be true.329 Freedom House states, “Police initially cleared the agent, but in 2013, prosecutors indicted former NIS director Won Sei-hoon on charge of authorizing agents to post thousands of online comments and 1.2 million tweets characterizing members of the political opposition as sympathizers of North Korea.”330 Won and his replacement, Nam Jae-joon, asserted that while the NIS had countered North Korean propaganda online, it had not engaged in political activity.331 The NIS “presented such electoral intervention as being in the interest of public and national security and therefore legitimate. Conservative forces were dismissive during months of ensuing protests that decried the electoral interference, calling efforts to initiate a full investigation destabilising to the state and therefore unpatriotic.”332 Won was given a suspended sentence in September 2014 for involvement in political activity as an intelligence official by the Seoul Central District Court, which acquitted him on the more egregious charge of election meddling.333 In February 2015, however, the Seoul High Court ruled that Won had also broken election laws, and handed down a three-year prison sentence.334 Then, in July 2015, the Supreme
328 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 212. 329 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 199. 330 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” 331 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” 332 Doucette, “The Korean Thermidor: On Political Space and Conservative Reactions,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38 no. 2 (2013), 299–310. 333 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” 334 “South Korea spy chief sentenced to three years in prison,” BBC, February 9, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31284704.
70 Court ruled that the evidence that secured Won’s conviction vis-à-vis election interference was inadmissible; Reuters reported “the court said it was unclear if some incriminating files found on computers used by agents said to be involved in the operation were work- related.”335
Of interest is the fact that individuals involved in the case who did not side in favor of Won were “subjected to career setbacks.”336 All were employed under the Ministry of Justice, headed by Justice Minister (later Prime Minister, then acting president upon Park’s impeachment) Hwang Kyo-ahn, a Park loyalist “with the National Security Law cited as the field of his expertise” 337 who began a career in prosecution under the Chun Doo-hwan regime.338 A judge who criticized the district court’s decision to acquit Won of election meddling on an internal network received a two-month suspension in December 2014. One prosecutor in charge of the case received a one-month suspension; another, a one-month pay cut for failing to adhere to internal procedures. The Prosecutor General resigned in September 2013 “amid rumors of marital misconduct and political pressure.” It was later discovered that the NIS was behind the scandal; “in January 2016, the Seoul High Court fined a NIS agent for illegally gathering personal information about Chae [the Prosecutor General who was mired in a scandal and resigned]’s eight-year-old extramarital son and leaking it to conservative news outlets as part of a smear campaign.”339
As Won’s indictment took place, “at the height of the electoral interference scandal,” the NIS revealed that Lee Seok-ki, the leader of the United Progressive Party
335 Ju-min Park, “South Korea court orders retrial of ex-spy chief in vote-meddling case,” Reuters, July 16, 2015, https://in.reuters.com/article/southkorea-spychief-retrial/south-korea-court-orders-retrial-of- ex-spy-chief-in-vote-meddling-case-idINKCN0PQ0LJ20150716 336 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” 337 “Park names Justice Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn as new PM,” Yonhap News Agency, May 21, 2015, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20150521002600315. 338 “Hwang Kyo-ahn,” World Economic Forum, Accessed August 29, 2019, https://www.weforum.org/people/hwang-kyo-ahn 339 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile”; “Ex-presidential official fined for leaking info on ex-top prosecutor’s extramarital son,” Yonhap News, January 7, 2016, http://bit.ly/1oZHkSb.
71 (UPP) and other UPP members were under investigation for treason, planning a rebellion on behalf of North Korea, and violating the NSL based on evidence put forward by the NIS. 340 They were subsequently arrested, and Lee was sentenced to a 12 year jail sentence.341 Doucette and Koo describe this move as reminiscent of “the tactics of past conservative regimes that used exaggerated public security threats to tarnish oppositional forces and to divert public attention from broader issues of social justice.”342 Under Minister Hwang, the Ministry of Justice also put forward a petition to dissolve the UPP, and the Constitutional Court ruled to have the UPP disbanded and eject UPP lawmakers from the National Assembly in December 2014,343 with the chief judge stating, “there was an urgent need to remove the threat posed by the party to the basic order of democracy.”344 The Index on Censorship notes, “groups that voice these kinds of pro-North Korea statements are tiny, fringe outfits that almost no one takes seriously and have never had any real success. Critics say criminalising their statements only lends them an undue air of seriousness.”345 The last time a party was disbanded by government mandate was in 1958346 under the ROK’s first authoritarian president. Amnesty International’s East Asia
340 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 209.; Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2015 South Korea Profile.” 341 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2015 South Korea Profile.” 342 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 200. 343 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2015 South Korea Profile.” 344 Jack Kim and James Pearson, “South Korea court orders breakup of left-wing party,” Reuters, December 18, 2014, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-politics/south-korea-court-orders- breakup-of-left-wing-party-idUSKBN0JX07R20141219. 345 Steven Borowiec, “South Koreans prosecuted for ‘praising North Korea’: National Security Law labelled ‘seriously problematic for the exercise of freedom of expression,’” Index on Censorship, February 11, 2014, https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2014/02/south-korean-lawmaker-faces-20-years-prison- praising-north-korea/. 346 Doucette and Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” 209.
72 Research Director, Roseann Rife, stated, “The ban on the UPP raises serious questions as to the authorities’ commitment to freedom of expression and association.”347
In 2018, during a Ministry of Defense investigation into a separate matter, it was discovered that the Defense Security Command (DSC) had collected intelligence on bereaved family members of the victims of the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster and drafted counterintelligence plans describing these individuals, who had criticized the government’s role in and handling of the incident, as “chongbuk,” (pro-North).348 The Sewol ferry disaster was an incident in which over 300 people, the majority of whom were high schoolers, drowned due to the capsizing of a heavily overloaded ferry. 349 Rampant corruption had enabled the ferry to sail despite carrying two times the legal limit of cargo.350 The tragedy shocked and outraged the nation, and the fact that President Park was unlocatable for seven hours after the incident compounded anger towards the government.351 Titles of DSC plans targeting family members of Sewol victims included, “Plan for Counterintelligence Activities related to the sinking of a maritime ferry in Jindo,” and “Prevention measures to block the spread of pro-North candlelight vigils.” KBS reported that the DSC documents contained no evidence to substantiate the label of pro- North leftist; instead, words used to describe these individuals included “critical socially” and “member of the Justice Party” (a left-leaning party).352 The DSC chief of staff at the time, Maj Gen So Gang-won, was arrested in 2018 for his role in the illegal surveillance
347 Kim and Pearson, “South Korea court orders breakup of left-wing party.” 348 Naru Kim, “How did the bereaved families of the Sewol victims become ‘pro-North’ after losing their children?” (in Korean), KBS News, May 06, 2019, https://mn.kbs.co.kr/news/view.do?ncd=4194889. 349 Sang-hun Choe, “An Overloaded Ferry Flipped and Drowned Hundreds of Schoolchildren. Could It Happen Again?” New York Times, June 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/sewol-ferry-accident.html. 350 Choe, “An Overloaded Ferry Flipped and Drowned Hundreds of Schoolchildren. Could It Happen Again?” 351 S. Nathan Park, “The Fall of ‘Corrupt but Competent’ Leadership in South Korea,” Atlantic, March 14, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/south-korea-park-impeach- sewol/519483/. 352 Kim, “How did the bereaved families of the Sewol victims become ‘pro-North’ after losing their children?” (in Korean).
73 of these individuals.353 DSC’s documents and activities were a prime example of the Park administration conflating government criticism with North Korean sympathies in order to repress critics. Legislator Chun Jung-bae, a member of Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Peace Party, released the DSC plans to the public in May 2019, stating, “The DSC censored the bereaved families of the victims of the Sewol ferry disaster by labeling them pro-North Korean forces, and the presidential office of the Blue House praised and encouraged the DSC’s activities.”354
In the case of the Park administration, quantitative data using North Korean provocations as a proxy shows that Park faced the most significant threat level from the North out of all the ROK administrations post-democratization—a value of 51 by the end of her term, which was 31 points higher than under the Lee administration.355 This being the case, it could be surmised that the restrictive environment for freedoms under the Park administration was a reflection of genuine, heightened security concerns. However, it is important to note that the rhetoric and verbiage used by facilitators of freedoms restrictions directly aligns with the ideology and motivations of the New Right. Investigations into these power abuses found that restrictions targeted individuals attempting to hold the government accountable, on the left of the political spectrum, or who were critical of the president, labeling their criticism as unpatriotic and therefore destabilizing to the state, if not outright indicative of pro-North sympathies. In other words, the Park administration faced a legitimately high threat from the North, but also used the narrative indiscriminately labeling government critics and political opposition national security liabilities—a narrative progressive administrations do not have at their disposal—to restrict freedoms.
353 “Security command general arrested for alleged surveillance of civilians,” Yonhap News Agency, September 5, 2018, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180905000877. 354 Gwang-su Park, “The bereaved families of the Sewol ferry disaster are pro-North? Park, DSC’s branding from right after the disaster” (in Korean), JoongAng Ilbo, May 07, 2019, https://news.joins.com/article/23460517. 355 This value is based on Beyond Parallel’s color-coded chart with “a darker shade of red represent [ing] a greater number of provocations by North Korea.” I assigned numbers to each shade, with the lightest being 1 and the darkest being 4. See Table 1 and Table 2 at the end of Chapter III for the complete data set broken down by year and administration. 74 Table 2. Beyond Parallel Dataset
Source: Beyond Parallel, Center for Strategic & International Studies, https://beyondparallel.csis.org/25-years-of-negotiations-provocations/
75 Table 3. DPRK Provocations by Administration
Administration Roh Tae-woo Kim Young-sam Kim Dae-jung Noh Moo-hyun Lee Myung-bak Park Geun-hye Moon Jae-in Political leaning Right Amalgam Left Left Right Right Left Beginning of year prior to term–end of term 87–25 Feb 93 92–25 Feb 98 97–25 Feb 03 03–25 Feb 08 07 - 25 Feb 13 13 - 10 Mar 17 16 - present
DPRK 3 Provocations 2 4 11 3 4 18 2 1 3 1 7 16 15 2 3 2 1 5 12 4 4 1 1 18 7 1 3 3 1 4 2 3 1 Total 7* 21 16 20 20 51 33**
Data derived from “25 years of Negotiations and Provocations: North Korea and the United States,” Beyond Parallel, Center for Strategic & International Studies (See Table 1). * Incomplete data (available from Jan 90–Feb 93). ** Incomplete data (available from Jan 16–Dec 17).
76 IV. AMALGAM: KIM YOUNG-SAM ADMINISTRATION (FEBRUARY 1993–FEBRUARY 1998)
The Kim Young-sam administration was a merger between once dissident Kim Young-sam’s progressive party and two conservative parties tied to prominent figures from the authoritarian period (one was led by Kim Jong-pil, the founder and first director of the KCIA, while the other was led by President Roh Tae-woo).356 Havingjoined forces with members of the right, Kim rebranded himself as a moderate alternative to his primary rival in the presidential race, Kim Dae-jung, who remained firmly on the left of the political spectrum.357 In addition to Kim’s prior status as part of the suppressed opposition, the Kim Young-sam administration was notable for being the first civilian administration post- democratization;358 Kim was not a military careerist, nor a member of the military elite, unlike past presidents Roh Tae-woo, Chun Doo-hwan, and Park Chung-hee. Writing in 1993, Cha observed the “[Kim Young-sam] administration has taken several measures toward eradicating the authoritarian legacies of past regimes.”359 Freedomhouse notes that “Kim curbed the internal surveillance powers of the security services, shook up the military hierarchy, and launched an anti-corruption campaign.”360 Despite major overhauls, a degree of freedoms restrictions stemming from the real and contrived North Korean threat and perpetuated by the ANSP remained.
In March 1993, Kim put forward a political amnesty directive that “released from prison and restored the civil rights of over 40,000 political dissidents, including the well-
356 Lynn, “Pandora’s Box? South Korea’s Democratization and Consolidation,” 40.; Kihl, Transforming Korean Politics: Democracy, Reform, and Culture, 89; Choe, “Kim Jong-pil, Political Kingmaker in South Korea, Dies at 92.” 357 Lynn, “Pandora’s Box? South Korea’s Democratization and Consolidation,” 40. 358 “Freedom in the World 1998” South Korea Profile,” Freedom House, Accessed July 15, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/1998/south-korea.; 359 Victor Cha, “Politics and Democracy under the Kim Young Sam Government: Something Old, Something New,” Asian Survey 33 no. 9 (September 1993), 854. 360 “Freedom in the World 1998: South Korea Profile,” Freedom House.
77 known activists Reverend Mun Ik Hwan and Li In Mo.”361 Mun, a democracy activist during the authoritarian period,362 had most recently been jailed for violating the NSL after traveling to the North sans government approval to discuss reunification under the Roh administration, while Li, an actual communist, had been imprisoned from the Korean War onwards. 363 Mun’s criminal record for NSL violations was cleared, while Li “was repatriated to the North on humanitarian grounds.” While prior presidents Roh and Chun had likewise implemented comparable directives, setting free an estimated 1,700 prisoners respectively, Cha observed, “the scale and scope of the present program is certainly unprecedented. Other reforms include a clemency program for student activists who violated military draft requirements during the Roh and Chun regimes because they were fleeing law enforcement authorities; an Education Ministry directive allowing the readmission of 1,000 students expelled because of antigovernment activities; and a Supreme Court ruling that the distribution of pro-North Korean literature does not constitute a violation of law.”364 In addition, Kim purposefully appointed individuals who lacked ties to previous regimes; for the positions of Foreign Minister, National Unification Board Minister, national security advisor, and ANSP director, “Kim appointed academics rather than career bureaucrats or senior ruling party politicians—much to the consternation of the latter two groups.”365 Kim’s choice to head the ANSP was especially atypical; as Cha noted, “its directorship generally has gone to senior military officials or government
361 Cha, “Politics and Democracy under the Kim Young Sam Government: Something Old, Something New,” 854. 362 “Moon Ik Hwan Dies; Dictators’ Foe was 76,” Associated Press, printed in New York Times, January 20, 1994, https://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/20/obituaries/moon-ik-hwan-dies-dictators-foe-was- 76.html. 363 Cha, “Politics and Democracy under the Kim Young Sam Government: Something Old, Something New,” 854. 364 Cha, “Politics and Democracy under the Kim Young Sam Government: Something Old, Something New,” 854. 365 Cha, “Politics and Democracy under the Kim Young Sam Government: Something Old, Something New,” 854.
78 prosecutors, and thus the choice of an academic symbolized the new administration’s intent to recast the purpose and activities of the agency.”366
Following a six year period of talks regarding ANSP reform, on December 7, 1993, the legislature passed a bill removing the ANSP’s authority to investigate violations of Article 7 and Article 10 of the National Security Law—“praising or sympathizing [with] anti-state groups” and “failing to inform the authorities of anti-state group activities”— respectively the “two most frequently invoked clauses to justify illegal investigation.” 367 The legislation also “[prohibited ANSP] agents from illegally detaining or questioning suspects or denying them access to lawyers” and put in place a requirement that “court writs must be secured prior to suspects being taken in for questioning.”368 Other key components of the bill included making ANSP endorsement or denunciation of any politician or political group punishable by law, with the intent of “[eliminating] the [ANSP’s] operations against opposition parties,” and giving the National Assembly the power to oversee the ANSP’s activities and budget.369 The National Assembly established the Intelligence Committee of the National Assembly to institutionalize oversight of the agency.370
After taking office, Kim Young-sam promptly reduced the military’s authorities through a series of positional rank reductions and organizational changes. He placed the once disparate military intelligence organizations—the Defense Security Command (DSC), the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the military electronic group—which had previously answered directly to the president, under the Minister of Defense.371 Hoon
366 Cha, “Politics and Democracy under the Kim Young Sam Government: Something Old, Something New,” 854. 367 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 467; Hoon, “South Korea: Spooks on a leash,” 22. 368 Hoon, “South Korea: Spooks on a leash,” 22. 369 Hoon, “South Korea: Spooks on a leash,” 22. 370 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 467. 371 Shim Jae Hoon, “South Korea: Spooks on a leash,” Far Eastern Economic Review 157 no. 1 (December 1993/January 1994), 22.
79 states, “He further stripped the DSC of all powers unrelated to military affairs. For example, its Directorate II will no longer be allowed to conduct surveillance on the media, university campuses, and political parties.”372 Kim also fired the DSC commander and army chief of staff, and lowered the rank of the DSC commander by one star, from major general to lieutenant general.373 In October 1993, following Kim’s address to top military officials imploring them to mark 1993 as a “new year in the history of the armed forces dedicated to the entire nation” versus military regimes, the National Assembly’s defense committee conducted an all-encompassing inspection of the DSC.374 The restructuring and removal of authorities from the DSC was particularly significant in that the DSC was the preeminent intelligence agency under South Korea’s last autocrat, Chun Doo-hwan,375 who had utilized his position as the DSC commander as a springboard to take over the government in a military coup following the assassination of Park Chung-hee.376 While Chun’s successor, Roh Tae-woo, reduced the DSC’s power in an effort to show his commitment to democratization, the DSC was implicated in a scandal revealing it was spying on critics and political opponents of the Roh government.377
In 1995, the ROK government also ratified the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.378 Regarding this action, Amnesty International stated, “ratification of this convention places a responsibility of
372 Hoon, “South Korea: Spooks on a leash,” 22. 373 Hoon, “South Korea: Spooks on a leash,” 22. 374 Hoon, “South Korea: Meeting the boss,” Far Eastern Economic Review 156 no. 43 (October 1993): 36. 375 Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence, 168. 376 Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence, 165. 377 Yong Cheol Kim, R. William Liddle, and Sam Said, “Political leadership and Civilian Supremacy in Third Wave Democracies: Comparing South Korea and Indonesia,” Pacific Affairs 79 no. 2 (Summer 2006), 253.; Peter Maass, “Roh Fires 2 “Officials in S. Korea,” Washington Post, October 9, 1990, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/10/09/roh-fires-2-officials-in-s-korea/25581c2e- 092e-408b-8009-811b1cca7ff8/?noredirect=on. 378 “Republic of Korea (South Korea): Open letter from Amnesty International to political parties on the occasion of the April 1996 National Assembly elections,” Amnesty International, February 1996, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/168000/asa250061996en.pdf.
80 governments to ensure that torture and ill-treatment are prohibited, not only in law but also in practice,” and observed it “[received] fewer reports of severe torture and ill-treatment than in previous decades and recognizes that improvements have taken place.”379 While lauding the government’s ratification of the UN convention, Amnesty International noted it still “[received] reports of detainees being deprived of sleep, threatened, coerced into signing confessions and sometimes beaten,” and wrote in a 1996 open letter “to all political parties and candidates in the [ROK] National Assembly elections” that “the authorities in South Korea should make clear that such practices will not be tolerated and should introduce effective measures to protect the human rights of detainees.”380
Writing in 1993, Hoon noted that while ANSP officials “remain generally committed to democratising the agency…several of them clearly believe that change has been too fast and too sweeping.”381 The ANSP’s official spokesperson, Cho Yong Ho, stated, “Since the launching of the civilian government…our agency has continually reformed and self-purified itself,” but also noted the ANSP bill would “pose considerable difficulties in our anti-communist investigative work.”382 Similarly, the ANSP’s head lawyer stated, “This law provides a lot of punitive clauses on [ANSP] officials who abuse their power, but knocks out all the powers they need to do their job.”383
In its 1996 open letter, Amnesty International observed that despite the 1993 bill curbing ANSP’s authorities, “many of the agency’s activities appear to continue unchecked.384 Amnesty International continues to document cases of illegal arrests and ill-treatment by the ANSP and is concerned that human rights abuses will continue unless
379 “Republic of Korea (South Korea): Open letter from Amnesty International to political parties on the occasion of the April 1996 National Assembly elections,” 4. 380 “Republic of Korea (South Korea): Open letter from Amnesty International to political parties on the occasion of the April 1996 National Assembly elections,” 4. 381 Hoon, “South Korea: Spooks on a leash,” 22. 382 Hoon, “South Korea: Spooks on a leash,” 22. 383 Hoon, “South Korea: Spooks on a leash,” 22. 384 “Republic of Korea (South Korea): Open letter from Amnesty International to political parties on the occasion of the April 1996 National Assembly elections,” 4.
81 it is made more accountable for its actions.” In spite of the various reforms implemented by Kim in an attempt to get rid of vestiges of authoritarian practices, the Kim administration continued to utilize the NSL to crack down on political critics in the name of public security. After the destabilizing Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–1998, the NSL was used to target individuals protesting unemployment.385 In the first six months of 1998, over four hundred students and workers were arrested.386 Additionally, the ANSP director with an academic background—Kim Deok—was replaced less than two years after his appointment with Kwon Young-hae,387 a military careerist who proceeded to orchestrate a disinformation campaign in an attempt to rig the 1997 presidential election against Kim Dae-jung. Kwon was later prosecuted under the next administration when Kim Dae-jung proceeded to win anyway.388
The ANSP saw its investigative powers vis-à-vis Article 7 and Article 10 of the NSL, previously legally curbed in light of civil liberties violations, restored in 1996. Seo attributes this to “problems of pro-North Korean activities and North Korean provocations heightened in the early 1990s.”389 Quantitative data on the level of the North Korean threat using North Korean provocations as a proxy indicates there were multiple provocations from 1992, the year leading up to Kim Young-sam taking office, to 1996, when ANSP regained domestic monitoring authorities. In 1996 specifically, provocations
385 Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World,” 633. 386 Kraft, “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World,” 633. 387 Insoo Kim, “South Korea’s Immature Professionalism in the Security Sector,” Middle East Institute, March 13, 2014, http://www.mei.edu/publications/south-koreas-immature-professionalism- security-sector#_ftnref5. 388 Insoo Kim, “South Korea’s Immature Professionalism in the Security Sector,” Middle East Institute, March 13, 2014, http://www.mei.edu/publications/south-koreas-immature-professionalism- security-sector#_ftnref5. 389 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 467.
82 equaled a value of 7.390 7 was the highest value for provocations in a year in the timeframe from 1990–1996 (the second highest was a value of 4 in 1995).391
The Kim Young-sam administration’s somewhat mixed legacy with regards to freedoms mirrors its merging of a previous political dissident and conservative members of the old guard. Kim undertook a great deal of reform, overhauling institutions that were responsible for abusing South Koreans’ civil and political rights, and that he had personally been a victim of, in the past. Nevertheless, his administration still utilized the false narrative conflating government criticism with pro-North sympathies in the face of mass unrest, and the ANSP continued to involve itself in domestic politics to discredit progressives. Additionally, a key part of ANSP reform meant to prevent the agency from engaging in civil liberty and political abuses was overturned in the face of a legitimate rising threat level from North Korea.
390 This value is based on Beyond Parallel’s color-coded chart with “a darker shade of red represent [ing] a greater number of provocations by North Korea.” I assigned numbers to each shade, with the lightest being 1 and the darkest being 4. 391 See Table 1 and Table 2 at the end of Chapter III for the complete data set broken down by year and administration. 83 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
84 V. PROGRESSIVE ADMINISTRATIONS IN DEMOCRATIC SOUTH KOREA
A. INTRODUCTION
Progressive administrations reformed institutions and practices associated with both national security and freedoms restrictions while actively addressing past abuses perpetrated by the government on national security grounds. Freedoms restrictions linked to the North Korea threat went down under these administrations. From 1998–2008, NSL indictments dropped significantly under the progressive administrations of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. Additionally, Kim Dae-Jung freed several prisoners accused of violating the NSL by previous administrations, while Roh Moo-Hyun put forward legislation in an attempt to reform or abolish the law. The Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo- hyun administrations advocated a “Sunshine Policy” of détente towards the North and significantly reformed the ANSP (rechristened the NIS by Kim in 1999) to reflect this new position. They additionally set up committees to bring to light human rights abuses during the authoritarian period and provide redress to the victims or the families that survived them. Moon Jae-in, who became president after his predecessor Park Geun-hye was impeached for abusing power, instituted sweeping reforms of the intelligence apparatus and prosecutor’s office, citing the need to increase transparency, prevent future abuses, and protect freedoms. However, progressives implemented certain freedoms restrictions to create an environment more amenable to positive engagement with North Korea. Haggard and You note, “it is important to underscore that the problem of executive discretion with respect to the media was by no means limited to conservative governments. Both the Kim and Roh administrations took executive and legislative actions designed to weaken the conservative media.” 392 All three progressive administrations were criticized by the conservative opposition as undertaking engagement with North Korea at the expense of national security.
392 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 175. 85 B. KIM DAE-JUNG ADMINISTRATION (FEBRUARY 1998–FEBRUARY 2003)
Sung-han Kim and Geun Lee argue that “the progressive and conservative coalitions perceived ‘traditional’ security threats from North Korea differently,” and that “the progressive coalition [under Kim Dae-jung] tried to desecuritize North Korean threats in order to change the political landscape in favor of the progressives.”393 As the most prominent opposition leader during the authoritarian period, Kim was a primary target of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA)—the precursor to what would eventually become the National Intelligence Service (NIS)—who was consistently labeled a pro- North leftist by the regime and nearly assassinated by the agency.394 Upon taking office, Kim “purged [the NIS’] hardline old guard” 395 and, in a complete recategorization of its function, turned the NIS’ focus toward “ameliorating relations with North Korea and preparing for the [June 2000] inter-Korean summit.” 396
In 2000, the legislature passed an act to clear the names of and compensate pro- democracy activists oppressed during the authoritarian period, which in turn established a Review Commission to examine applications submitted for this purpose. 397 The Commission had the ability to provide recommendations with regard to “pardons or expungement of an applicant’s conviction,” job rehiring, and the striking of school “disciplinary records” in favor of “honorary degrees” for individuals who had been implicated by their involvement in the democracy movement. 398 The Commission
393 Sung-han Kim and Geun Lee, “When security met politics: desecuritization of North Korean threats by South Korea’s Kim Dae-jung government,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 11 (2011), 51–52. 394 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, 43. 395 John Larkin, “Spies Out in the Cold,” Far Eastern Economic Review 165 no. 7, February 2002, 24. 396 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 456. 397 Paul Hanley, “Transitional Justice in South Korea: One Country’s Restless Search for Truth and Reconciliation,” University of Pennsylvania East Asia Law Review 9, no. 2 (2014), 153. 398 Hanley, Transitional Justice, 153
86 received the most attention for its role in enabling the posthumous reversal of the conviction of the eight students falsely accused of working on behalf of the North (the People’s Revolutionary Party case) who were summarily executed in 1975.399 In another high-profile case, the Commission determined Tsche Chong-Kil, a Seoul National University law professor whom the KCIA asserted had committed suicide by jumping out of their building after confessing to be a spy for North Korea, was tortured by the KCIA and most likely killed and thrown out a window by the agency.400 Factoring into the determination was a prior KCIA agent’s testimony that “the official announcement…was a fabrication…when [Professor Tsche] lost consciousness while being tortured, investigators mistook him for dead and pushed him off the fire exit.” 401 In 2006, the Seoul High Court provided Tsche’s family monetary reparations.402
Despite being a progressive, Kim Dae-jung was able to utilize the NIS to further his political agenda vis-à-vis North Korea, and in doing so, infringed on political rights, specifically with regards to a lack of transparency in functioning of government and undue state interference in the affairs of a private business.403 After conservative allegations that Kim had achieved the inter-Korean summit by paying North Korea to meet, a special prosecutor team determined that 450 million USD had been transferred to North Korea via an NIS bank account not to secure the meeting itself, but rather to finance seven business licenses and help North Korea carry out projects agreed upon at the summit.404 Seo states, “however, the government was found to be responsible for using the NIS channel to pressure the Korea Development Bank to illegally lend funds to the Hyundai Group beyond its credit limit without any collateral and wire a portion of those funds to one of North
399 Choe, Young-Yoon, “Sentence of Innocence to the People’s Revolution Party Case After 32 Years,” Hankook Ilbo, January 24, 2007. 400 Hanley, “Transitional Justice in South Korea,” 154. 401 Hanley, “Transitional Justice in South Korea,” 154–5. 402 Hanley, “Transitional Justice in South Korea.” 403 See “South Korea: Freedom in the World 2019,” Freedom House for a breakdown of what comprises political rights. 404 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 458.
87 Korea’s foreign bank accounts.”405 Seo observes that “the Kim Dae-jung administration used the NIS as a secret channel to facilitate transfer of funds to North Korea, a politically sensitive activity that might have ignited controversy over the legitimacy of his North Korean policy” 406 had it been conducted in a transparent manner.
The Kim administration also exerted influence on the press in what appeared to be an attempt to place limitations on negative media coverage of his administration’s policies, the most controversial of which was his “Sunshine Policy” of positive engagement with the North. Post-democratization, conservative newspapers owned a disproportionate share of the newspaper market.407 As of 2003, the Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, and Dong-a Ilbo—the three major, conservative newspapers—comprised 70 percent of the market.408 The Kim administration carried out a comprehensive tax probe of major (and therefore conservative) media outlets, leading some groups to accuse Kim of muzzling the press.409 Under the Kim administration, the Chosun Ilbo and the JoongAng Ilbo became the targets of tax evasion investigations.410 Hun Shik Kim states, “By 2001, the tax investigation and audits were expanded to include 23 other media outlets in the country, creating a furor over the real political intentions of the Korean government.”411 Freedom House notes the lack of consensus regarding whether these actions were legitimate or a pretense for restricting freedom of the press, stating, “Although civic groups and the majority of citizens polled
405 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 458. 406 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 461. 407 Qian Gong and Gary Rawnsley, “Media freedom and responsibility in South Korea: The perceptions of journalists and politicians during the Roh Moo-hyun presidency,” Journalism 19 no. 9–10 (2018), 1260. 408 “Reporters Without Borders Annual Report 2004 – South Korea,” Reporters Without Borders, Accessed September 10, 2019, https://www.refworld.org/docid/46e69100c.html. 409 Hun Shik Kim, “Media, the Public, and Freedom of the Press,” Social Indicators Research 62/63, The Quality of Life in Korea: Comparative and Dynamic Perspectives (April 2003), 345–364.; “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2012,” Freedom House, Accessed September 08, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2012/south-korea. 410 Kim, “Media, the Public, and Freedom of the Press.” 411 Kim, “Media, the Public, and Freedom of the Press,” 359, referencing International Press Institute, 2001.
88 viewed the case as an appropriate tax evasion matter, the opposition and some international press-freedom associations accused the government…of trying to gag the press. The papers had been critical of Kim’s economic reforms and overtures to North Korea.”412 Hun Shik Kim states critics of the policy “[alleged] that the move [was] an attempt by the President to crush media opponents of his controversial ‘Sunshine Policy,’ one of engaging North Korea.” Hun Shik Kim also observes that “in late 1998, then newly-elected Korean President Kim Dae Jung chose the presidents of the two television networks [KBS and MBC] from among his close associates. These new network chiefs then inevitably replaced their respective news directors with their personal favorites.” Additionally, a Kim Dae Jung ally became the head of Yonhap News Agency in 2000. Hun Shik Kim asserts, “It is, therefore, quite reasonable to assume that the Korean network news services toe the line in accordance with the government’s agenda.”413
C. ROH MOO-HYUN ADMINISTRATION (FEBRUARY 2003–FEBRUARY 2008)
Roh Moo-hyun, another progressive, became the next president after Kim Dae- jung. Roh likewise focused on NIS reform to prevent power abuses stemming from intelligence politicization in favor of a conservative agenda. Seo states, “to systemize and improve the flow of information among ministries, the role of integrating and processing NIS security intelligence was handed to the National Security Council Secretariat, and later to the Presidential Secretariat.414 In November 2004, the NIS formed an internal special truth committee which investigated past wrongdoings, publishing six volumes of reflective reports three years later.415 Roh’s Uri party also “introduced legislation to loosen or scrap
412 “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2002,” Freedom House, Accessed August 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2002/south-korea. 413 Hun Shik Kim, “Media, the Public, and Freedom of the Press,” 357. 414 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 456, citing The Korea Association of National Intelligence Studies, National Intelligence Studies, p. 485. 415 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 456, citing Dang Kim, Secret File National Intelligence Agency, pp. 167–169.
89 the [NSL], offering the country alternatives ranging from revisions of the existing law to the drafting of an entirely new law” in October 2004 in spite of an August 2004 ruling by the Constitutional Court that the NSL was not overly restrictive of human rights.416 The Roh administration argued that the NSL went against democratic principles417 and was an anachronism and roadblock to positive engagement with the North.418 Freedom House states that “the opposition [Grand National Party (GNP)] argued that the NSL is a key pillar of their anti-Communist platform; its repeal would be contrary to the party’s ideological position and detrimental to the national interest.”419
Though the Roh administration was unsuccessful in its attempt to revise or abolish the law, its genuine attempt to do so—like Kim’s repurposing of the NIS—epitomized the progressive emphasis on preserving freedoms over national security concerns, and the political position that North Korea no longer posed a serious threat to the South, even in the face of major provocations. Freedom House’s 2007 report on South Korea observes, “Roh for the most part maintained his ‘peace and prosperity’ engagement policy toward North Korea—a continuation of the ‘sunshine’ policy of his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung— despite North Korea’s missile tests in July and its test of a nuclear device in October, which drew international condemnation.”420 Quantitative data on the North Korean threat using provocations as a proxy yielded the observation that the Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Myung- bak administrations faced the same level of the threat from North Korea, with provocations
416 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2005: South Korea Profile.” Accessed September 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2005/south-korea. 417 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2006: South Korea Profile.” Accessed September 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2006/south-korea. 418 “Times change, so why not laws?” Economist, November 4, 2004, https://www.economist.com/asia/2004/11/04/times-change-so-why-not-laws. 419 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2006: South Korea Profile.” 420 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2007: South Korea Profile.” Accessed September 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2007/south-korea.
90 equaling a value of 20 by the end of term, respectively.421 Given the same genuine threat level, Roh asserted that North Korea no longer posed a serious threat and pushed reforms to increase transparency at the expense of intelligence effectiveness, while the Lee administration declared the need to emphasize national security in the face of a high threat level from North Korea and strengthened the NIS’ authorities, ratcheted up censorship, and saw a spike in NSL indictments.
The Roh administration’s desire to maintain more amicable relations with North Korea and a domestic narrative in which North Koreans are seen as “wayward cousins” rather than existential threats also led to media restrictions, however.422 The Korea Media Rating Board, whose members were presidential appointees, banned three games that feature North Korea as an adversary threatening and attacking South Korea (it should be noted that even in 2005, online gaming was a widespread phenomenon in the ROK).423 In addition, there was a de facto ban on “Seoul Train,” a documentary on the underground network that helps North Korean defectors escape via China in South Korea. Jim Butterworth, an American who filmed and coproduced the documentary, stated, “In South Korea, we have been turned down by everybody—film, DVD, TV, you name it—no one will touch ‘Seoul Train’…The South Korean government essentially banned the film.”424 Butterworth also noted that the Seoul Human Rights festival was an anomaly in that it would not show the documentary, which was played at approximately 20 human rights festivals around the world.425
421 This value is based on Beyond Parallel’s color-coded chart with “a darker shade of red represent [ing] a greater number of provocations by North Korea.” I assigned numbers to each shade, with the lightest being 1 and the darkest being 4. See Table 1 and Table 2 at the end of Chapter III for the complete data set broken down by year and administration. 422 James Brooke, “South Koreans React to Video Games’ Depictions of North Koreans,” New York Times, December 7, 2005, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/arts/south-koreans-react-to-video-games- depictions-of-north-koreans.html. 423 Brooke, “South Koreans React to Video Games’ Depictions of North Koreans.” 424 Brooke, “South Koreans React to Video Games’ Depictions of North Koreans.” 425 Brooke, “South Koreans React to Video Games’ Depictions of North Koreans.”
91 Haggard and You also observed that the Roh administration attempted to “weaken the monopoly of the conservative newspapers” by scrapping government departments’ press rooms and providing daily government briefings instead, and “invoking antimonopoly restrictions on dominant media outlets.” 426 Freedom House observed, “According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the move [to conduct daily government briefings in lieu of press rooms] was criticized by larger media outlets on the basis that it limited their access to officials but was welcomed by smaller outlets that had been excluded under the previous system.” 427 The three most prominent daily newspapers, the conservative Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, and Dong-a Ilbo, criticized the antimonopoly law as unconstitutional, and won their case against the government in the Constitutional Court, which declared the legislation went against freedom of the press.428 In 2007, the administration implemented measures preventing journalists from accessing government buildings and from interviewing “ministers and other civil servants” in the absence of prior government approval, which journalists and international media watchdog organizations denounced “as an attempt to restrict access to information.” 429 Reporters Without Borders’ 2004 report on South Korea also observed that the Roh administration faced backlash “after Seo Dung-ku, a political adviser to…President Roh during the election campaign, was appointed to head the [KBS] network.” 430 However, in a positive development showing a departure from the tradition of what Hun Shik Kim describes as “the government’s insistence on retaining power over appointments of media
426 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 176. 427 “Freedom in the World 2004: South Korea Profile,” Freedom House, Accessed September 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2004/south-korea. 428 Haggard and You, “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” 176.; “Freedom in the World 2007: South Korea Profile,” Freedom House. 429 “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2008,” Freedom House, Accessed September 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2008/south-korea. 430 “Reporters Without Borders Annual Report 2004 – South Korea,”
92 managers,”431 Seo tendered his resignation in response to KBS journalists’ concerns that he would politicize the network.432
D. MOON JAE-IN ADMINISTRATION (MAY 2017–PRESENT)
Moon was elected to the presidency following Park Geun-hye’s impeachment for abusing the authority of her office and influence peddling. The Park scandal implicated the intelligence apparatus as well, bringing to light censuring and surveillance of political critics on the left indiscriminately labeled “pro-North” in a manner reflective of the authoritarian period. Moon’s election also resurfaced past intelligence abuses of power that sought to sway voters against Moon and toward Park in the 2013 presidential election (along with progressive politicians more generally in previous elections). The Park scandal also brought to light power abuses more generally in the intelligence apparatus and prosecutor’s office. Moon has directed institutional changes in all of these organizations, stating reform is necessary to ensure they uphold the rights of the citizenry and remain apolitical.433
Under the Moon administration, the NIS conducted an internal report of investigation that confirmed NIS psychological operations teams had orchestrated an internet campaign with the objective of securing votes for conservative candidates.434 Seo notes that “[Moon] vowed to transfer the right of investigation to the National Police Agency in order to restrain the NIS’ excessive authority and restore its original function as an intelligence agency.” 435 Upon assuming office, Moon set up a NIS reform commission.436 In July 2017, the commission announced it would eliminate the NIS’ collection and analysis bureaus, which oversaw collecting and monitoring domestic
431 Kim, “Media, the Public, and Freedom of the Press,” 357. 432 “Reporters Without Borders Annual Report 2004 – South Korea,” Reporters Without Borders. 433 434 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea.” 435 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea, 467.” 436 Kim, “NIS to abolish office for domestic intelligence collection as part of its reform.”
93 intelligence trends.437 The NIS reform commission chair, Jung Hae-gu, stated, “President Moon’s promise to shut down the collection of domestic intelligence means having the NIS stop collecting illegal intelligence that exceeds its authority, such as information about politicians.”438
Additionally, lawmakers drafted bills that United Nations privacy expert Cannataci describes as “aimed at a radical overhaul of the NIS.”439 The bills seek to strip the NIS of its authorities to conduct domestic investigations on violations of “Article 7 (praising or sympathizing [with] anti-state groups) and Article 10 (failing to inform the authorities of anti-state group activities) of the National Security [Law]—the two most frequently invoked clauses to justify illegal investigation.”440 Regarding an NIS reform bill put forward in June 2017, the Hankyoreh reported it “would also add a clause enabling the National Assembly to file a motion of impeachment against the NIS director, to put a check on the agency’s illegal activity. Other clauses in the bill would toughen punishments for NIS agents’ involvement in politics, abuse of their authority, and wiretapping, along with abolishing the statute of limitations on the crime of political interference.”441 The bill also sought to increase oversight over the agency by mandating budget documentation be submitted to the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee and its Special Committee on Budgets and Accounts and disallowing the masking of portions of the NIS budget under other organizations.442
In 2018, revelations that the Defense Security Command (DSC) had drafted an extensive martial law plan to deal with protestors rallying to oust prior President Park in
437 Kim, “NIS to abolish office for domestic intelligence collection as part of its reform.” 438 Kim, “NIS to abolish office for domestic intelligence collection as part of its reform.” 439 UN Special Rapporteur Joseph Cannataci, “South Korea: Urgent reforms on right to privacy still needed despite significant progress, says UN expert,” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, July 30, 2019, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24864&LangID=E. 440 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea,” 467. 441 Kim, “NIS to abolish office for domestic intelligence collection as part of its reform.” 442 Kim, “NIS to abolish office for domestic intelligence collection as part of its reform.”
94 the event that Park was not impeached sparked public outrage. The fact that DSC considered martial law implementation was a source of serious concern for the vast majority of the populace; a survey by Realmeter in July 2018 found that 44.3 percent of respondents thought the DSC needed to be reformed to prevent it from meddling in domestic politics, 34.7 percent thought the DSC should be dissolved, and 11.3 percent thought it should still retain its authorities and structure.443 Given South Korea’s history of military dictatorships that followed military coups and martial law implementation, including by DSC commander-turned president Chun Doo-hwan, the revelations raised concerns that the DSC was overextending its authority at the expense of liberty, with some critics accusing the DSC of considering a coup attempt.444
Moon directed an investigation into the legality of the martial law plan, and in August 2018, announced the DSC would be dismantled.445 Moon stated, “I have never used the DSC for political reasons, and I have never even held a private meeting with the DSC commander since my inauguration…But I believe it is important to institutionalize [the ban on the DSC’s political involvement] instead of just leaving it to the goodwill of the president.”446 Additionally, Moon asserted, “Regardless of whether it constitutes a crime, I believe it was a serious betrayal of the people that the DSC should have never committed.”447 A presidential decree set up a “Defense Security Support Command” (DSSC) in the DSC’s stead, and forbid the DSSC from partaking in political activities and from establishing regional detachments.448 According to a Yonhap news report, the decree also “stipulates that [DSSC members] can take issue with or reject political directives.”449
443 “80% of Koreans want Defense Security Command dismantled,” Korea Times, July 12, 2018, http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2018/07/356_252145.html. 444 “Kim martial law: 4 questions to understand the ‘Kim martial law’ ripple” (in Korean), BBC News Korea, July 12, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/korean/news-44803438. 445 “Moon says military will never again be used for political gains,” Yonhap News Agency. 446 “Moon says military will never again be used for political gains,” Yonhap News Agency. 447 “Moon says military will never again be used for political gains,” Yonhap News Agency. 448 “Moon says military will never again be used for political gains,” Yonhap News Agency. 449 “Moon says military will never again be used for political gains,” Yonhap News Agency.
95 In January 2018, the Moon administration released a statement regarding its intent to transform the NIS, the police, and the prosecutor’s office.450 In a press briefing, senior presidential secretary Cho Kuk stated, “These organizations had worked on the opposite side of the people in the past. But even after the launch of a democratic government, they continued to work for the interest and benefits of their own organization.” 451 Cho highlighted the following as the primary goals of the reforms: “rooting out wrongdoings from the past, transforming the three organizations into people-centered organizations, and controlling and preventing them from abusing their power.” 452 The NIS’ counterintelligence investigative authorities will be transferred to the National Policy Agency, which in turn will create a new “security investigation bureau” to handle these cases.453 Cho relayed, “the police will introduce new self-autonomous police agencies and divide the National Police Agency [NPA] into investigation-centered forces and administration-centered forces, in order to balance the rights of the police and to remove any concern about excessive power.”454 He also noted that prosecutors’ investigative authorities would largely be reduced, and that three central positions in the Ministry of Justice would be filled with individuals who were not prosecutors in order to sever links between the ministry and the prosecutor’s office to prevent undue influence.455 Reporting on pushback from the prosecutor general on the reform measures in May 2019, the Korea Herald notes, “the prosecution in Korea has the exclusive rights to indict and seek warrants for suspects, and has broad judicial control over the police. Critics say this system fails to provide adequate checks and balances and has led to abuses of power.”456
450 Sojung Yoon, “Cheong Wa Dae announces reforms at investigation agencies,” Korea.net, January 15, 2018, http://korea.net/NewsFocus/policies/view?articleId=152994. 451 Yoon, “Cheong Wa Dae announces reforms at investigation agencies.” 452 Yoon, “Cheong Wa Dae announces reforms at investigation agencies.” 453 Yoon, “Cheong Wa Dae announces reforms at investigation agencies.” 454 Yoon, “Cheong Wa Dae announces reforms at investigation agencies.” 455 Yoon, “Cheong Wa Dae announces reforms at investigation agencies.” 456 Hyun-ju Ock, “Tension mounts over police-prosecution investigative rights reform,” Korea Herald, May 6, 2019, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190506000151. 96 Moon’s reform initiative, which encompasses the entire intelligence and security services apparatus (the prosecutor’s office included, due to its investigative authorities), was initiated and remains in place despite data indicating that his administration faced the second highest level of threat from North Korea post-democratization as of the end of 2017, at which point provocations equaled a value of 33. This was 13 points higher than the level Lee Myung-bak’s conservative administration, which significantly curtailed freedoms in the name of national security, had faced. While the genuine North Korean threat Moon faced as of December 2017 was 18 points lower than the level Park Geun-hye had faced by the end of her term (a value of 51), the data broken down by year shows that Moon came into office facing the highest threat level from North Korea in any given year (a value of 18), and faced the third highest level in any given year (a value of 15) in 2017.457
In 2017, the Moon government took steps to revive the National Human Rights Commission, which was neglected under his conservative predecessors.458 Cho Kuk, Senior Secretary to the President for Civil Affairs, stated, “President Moon Jae-in has given orders for the National Human Rights Commission to resume its special presidential briefings in order to proactively redress the government’s negligence and harm to human rights and to ensure that this government actualizes human rights.”459 Moon also directed that government departments address recommendations from the commission in a more efficient and comprehensive manner; Cho noted, “Only implementing certain secondary
457 This value is based on Beyond Parallel’s color-coded chart with “a darker shade of red represent [ing] a greater number of provocations by North Korea.” I assigned numbers to each shade, with the lightest being 1 and the darkest being 4. See Table 1 and Table 2 at the end of Chapter III for the complete data set broken down by year and administration. 458 Se-young Lee and Jung-ae Lee, “Blue House instituting measures to restore role and function of Human Rights Commission,” Hankyoreh, May 26, 2017, http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/796393.html. 459 Lee and Lee, “Blue House instituting measures to restore role and function of Human Rights Commission.”
97 changes is basically the same as rejecting the recommendation. President Moon’s orders are to eliminate this practice of ‘superficial acceptance.’”460
Freedom House’s 2018 report on South Korea noted an increase in political freedoms in the category of “are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution,” observing that “a pattern of increased surveillance, investigation, and prosecution of online speech during Park’s tenure appeared to ease after her impeachment.”461 Arrests resulting from NSL violations dropped from 21 in 2016 to 7 in 2017.462 There have been multiple instances of relaxed enforcement of the NSL and reduced sentencing under the Moon administration. 463 For instance, in November 2018, there was a rally during which individuals clearly praised Kim Jong-un and North Korean ideology but faced no repercussions.464 The Diplomat observes, “there has been an increasing number of cases where South Korean courts reconsidered penalties imposed on people prosecuted for violating the National Security Law.”465 In one case, an individual who praised North Korea on the internet had his sentence shortened from a year to nine months due to the court dropping some of his charges after determining that he had neither taken action to aid the North, nor had he been a member of a group acting on behalf of North Korea.466 This trend is in marked contrast to the strict enforcement of the NSL under conservative
460 Lee and Lee, “Blue House instituting measures to restore role and function of Human Rights Commission.” 461 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018 South Korea Profile.” 462 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018 South Korea Profile.” 463 Tae-jun Kang, “Is South Korea Ready to Say Goodbye to Its National Security Law?,” Diplomat, December 21, 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/is-south-korea-ready-to-say-goodbye-to-its-national- security-law/. 464 Kang, “Is South Korea Ready to Say Goodbye to Its National Security Law? 465Kang, “Is South Korea Ready to Say Goodbye to Its National Security Law? 466 Kang, “Is South Korea Ready to Say Goodbye to Its National Security Law?
98 administrations, in which even posting North Korean propaganda as a joke merited jail time.467
Reporters Without Borders declared that under the Moon administration, South Korea’s press freedom has seen a “distinct improvement after a bad decade in which South Korea fell more than 30 places in RSF [Reporters Sans Frontieres, AKA Reporters Without Borders]’ World Press Freedom Index.” In 2017, Newstapa (the independent news outlet which rose to prominence after it paved the way for reporting on NIS election meddling) producer Choi Seung-ho was voted in as MBC’s new president.468 Choi, a veteran MBC employee who became president of its labor union in 2003, worked for Newstapa following his dismissal from MBC during the 2012 strike by journalists demanding press independence from government interference under the Lee administration.469 The MBC chapter of the National Union of Mediaworkers observed, “It is of exceptional significance that the new president is a network member who was illegally fired five years ago during a labor union general strike to demand fairness in broadcasting.”470 Hankyoreh reported, “Choi’s first order of business as president will be the reinstatement of other dismissed employees.”471 South Korea’s RSF World Press Freedom Index ranking rose from 70/180 in 2016 under the previous Park administration to 41 in 2019 under Moon. (See Figure 2 for South Korea’s RSF’s World Press Freedom Index rankings progression from 2013 to 2018.)
467 “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2013,” Freedom House, Accessed August 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/south-korea. 468 Jun-yong Park and Hyo-sil Kim, “Dismissed producer returns as new president of MBC after nearly 2,000 day absence,” Hankyoreh, December 08, 2017, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/822687.html. 469 Park and Kim, “Dismissed producer returns as new president of MBC after nearly 2,000 day absence.” 470 Park and Kim, “Dismissed producer returns as new president of MBC after nearly 2,000 day absence.” 471 Park and Kim, “Dismissed producer returns as new president of MBC after nearly 2,000 day absence.” 99 Figure 2. RSF’s World Press Freedom Index Rankings, South Korea (2013–2018)
Source: “South Korea,” Reporters Without Borders, Accessed September 09, 2019, https://rsf.org/en/south-korea
However, Freedom House also observed a decline in civil liberties and concerns regarding personal autonomy and individual rights stemming from the Moon administration’s focus on ameliorating relations with North Korea. Freedom House’s 2018 report discussed restrictions in freedom of the press, noting “there was pressure to keep media coverage of North Korea and the inter-Korean diplomatic process relatively positive.” For instance, “after he reported stories about South Korean involvement in North Korea’s evasion of sanctions on its coal exports,” a Korean Voice of America journalist was taken off a messaging group that was the official means of keeping foreign media apprised of summit activities during the third inter-Korean summit between Moon and Kim Jong-un in September 2018. The next month, the Ministry of Unification (MOU) prevented Chosun Ilbo reporter Kim Myeong-sung from reporting on upcoming “high-level inter-Korean talks because of his status as a North Korean defector. MOU apparently decided that his presence could jeopardize the success of the talks and threatened to ban Chosun Ilbo from the press pool entirely if Kim was not replaced,” drawing condemnation from press freedom and human rights groups domestically and internationally.472 Freedom House also observed a restriction vis-à-vis the question, “are individuals able to exercise the right
472 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018 South Korea Profile.” 100 to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors?” Moon has used the influence of his position as president to induce chaebol (business conglomerates)—in particular, Samsung, “to create investment plans for North Korea that can be offered as part of formal negotiations.”473
E. CONCLUSION
Overall, progressive administrations implemented less freedoms restrictions that used North Korea as justification than their conservative counterparts, even when facing a comparable genuine threat level from North Korea. This was expected due to the historical linkage between the authoritarian regime’s anti-communist ideology and severe freedoms restrictions. Conservative administrations in democratic South Korea have inherited the hawkish ideology of the regime, along with the narrative that labels their political opposition as pro-North national security liabilities; progressive administrations, on the other hand, favor more reconciliatory policies towards the North, and having been victims of the false narrative, are motivated to reform structures and laws that have enabled freedoms abuses while exposing abuses of the past. Nevertheless, progressive administrations were not exempt from the practice of restricting freedoms due to North Korea. Instead of using the North Korea threat as justification, in alignment with their political stance towards the North, they utilized the rationale of needing to maintain the peace to further negotiations.
473 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018 South Korea Profile.” 101 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
102 VI. CONCLUSION
This thesis explored how South Korean administrations have used North Korea as justification for freedoms restrictions, and sought to determine the motivations behind this practice, along with the reasons behind variance in the degree of freedoms curtailment. In order to fully answer the question of how North Korea has impacted freedoms in the South, it was necessary to consider the history and relationship between North and South Korea, along with the history and characteristics of South Korea’s political polarization. Researching the authoritarian period yielded the observation that the existential threat North Korea posed was both a serious national security concern and a useful pretext for repressing political dissidents. Both the North Korea threat and political instability caused by political activists—North Korean sympathizers or not—were sources of concern for the regime. When South Korea underwent democratization in 1987, it was ultimately facilitated by the regime, enabling members of the regime to stay in politics. 474 Conservative administrations in democratic South Korea are the ideological descendants of the authoritarian regime, while progressive administrations are the ideological descendants of prior political dissidents and democracy activists.475
This being the case, I had hypothesized that freedoms restrictions stemming from the existence of North Korea would be higher under conservative administrations due to the linkage between the (real and contrived) North Korea threat and political narratives that benefited conservatives, and that freedoms restrictions were necessarily lower under progressive administrations due to their inability to harness this narrative, regardless of changes in the genuine level of threat North Korea posed. Analyzing quantitative data that utilized North Korean provocations as a proxy for the level of threat South Korea faced from the North yielded the determination that higher freedoms restrictions under conservative administrations could not simply be attributed to a consistently higher genuine threat level during their terms. One particularly useful comparison was between the
474 Chaibong, “South Korea’s Miraculous Democracy.” 475 Chaibong, “South Korea’s Miraculous Democracy.” 103 progressive administration of Roh Moo-hyun versus the conservative administration of Lee Myung-bak. Despite facing an equal level of threat from North Korea, they had drastically different approaches towards the North and with regards to freedoms. Roh favored positive engagement with North Korea and reform of the intelligence apparatus for increased accountability at the expense of effectiveness; conversely, Lee favored hawkish policies towards the North, and increased the emphasis on national security and intelligence effectiveness at the expense of accountability. Roh’s tendencies reflected the trend for progressive administrations writ large; likewise, Lee’s tendencies were shared by other conservative administrations.
I found that there were indeed more freedoms restrictions under conservatives that cited the North Korean threat as justification, and that while conservative administrations utilized the narrative of political critics being North Korean sympathizers to infringe upon all categories of freedoms—civil, political, individual, internet, and press—progressives did not. However, my research also brought to my attention a different motivation for freedoms restrictions vis-à-vis North Korea specific to progressives that I had initially overlooked: restrictions for the purpose of fostering an environment conducive to positive engagement and negotiation with the North.476 This has taken the form of media and individual rights restrictions under progressive administrations.477
Political scholars point to South Korea’s transfer of power from the incumbent conservative party to the progressives, who had once been the political opposition in perpetuity, then back to the conservatives, as a signpost of the ROK’s successful democratic consolidation. The combination of the legacy of authoritarianism, the ever- present North Korea issue, and political polarization, however, appears to act as an inhibitor in maturing its consolidation. This is visible in the amount of variation in the use,
476 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 458–461.; Brooke, “South Koreans React to Video Games’ Depictions of North Koreans”; Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018 South Korea Profile.” 477 Seo, “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform,” 458–461.; Brooke, “South Koreans React to Video Games’ Depictions of North Koreans”; Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018 South Korea Profile.” 104 abuse, and restructuring of the intelligence apparatus depending on whether a conservative or progressive president is in power. Thus far, rather than an institutionalized balance between safeguarding national security and preserving freedoms that transcends political leanings, there appears to be a cyclical trend in intelligence reform in which progressive administrations strip away authorities tied to power abuses, while conservative administrations restore or strengthen them in the name of national security.
105 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
106 LIST OF REFERENCES
Amnesty International. “Annual Report 2015/16–South Korea.” 2016. http://bit.ly/ 1DkoIB4.
———. “Republic of Korea.” Amnesty International Report 2013: The State of the World’s Human Rights. http://files.amnesty.org/air13/ AmnestyInternational_AnnualReport2013_complete_en.pdf.
———. “Republic of Korea (South Korea): Open letter from Amnesty International to political parties on the occasion of the April 1996 National Assembly elections.” February 1996. https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/168000/ asa250061996en.pdf.
———. “Republic of Korea: Submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review, October– November 2012.” https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/20000/ asa250012012en.pdf.
———. “South Korea: National Security Law continues to restrict freedom of expression.” January 20, 2015. https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/ 212000/asa250012015en.pdf.
Ahn, Seok. “11 Online North Korean Sympathizers Arrested. 5 Times More Social Networking Accounts Blocked [for Violating the National Security Act] Over the Past Year,” [in Korean]. Seoul Shinmun. May 18, 2012. http://www.seoul.co.kr/ news/newsView.php?id=20120518011015.
Associated Press, printed in New York Times. “Moon Ik Hwan Dies; Dictators’ Foe was 76.” January 20, 1994. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/20/obituaries/moon-ik- hwan-dies-dictators-foe-was-76.html.
Bae, Myung-bok. “Tackling the Imperial Presidency: The Case for Constitutional Amendment,” Global Asia 12, no. 2 (2017).
Borowiec, Steven. “South Koreans prosecuted for ‘praising North Korea’: National Security Law labelled ‘seriously problematic for the exercise of freedom of expression,’” Index on Censorship, February 11, 2014, https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2014/02/south-korean-lawmaker-faces-20- years-prison-praising-north-korea/.
BBC. “South Korea spy chief sentenced to three years in prison.” February 9, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31284704.
BBC News Korea. “Kim martial law: 4 questions to understand the ‘Kim martial law’ ripple” [in Korean]. July 12, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/korean/news-44803438.
107 Brooke, James. “South Koreans React to Video Games’ Depictions of North Koreans.” New York Times. December 7, 2005. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/arts/ south-koreans-react-to-video-games-depictions-of-north-koreans.html.
Bruneau, Thomas C. “Intelligence Reform in Brazil: A Long, Drawn-Out Process,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 28, no. 3 (2015), 502–519, http://hdl.handle.net/10945/45963.
Cannataci, Joseph. UN Special Rapporteur. “South Korea: Urgent reforms on right to privacy still needed despite significant progress, says UN expert.” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. July 30, 2019. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/ DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24864&LangID=E.
Center for Strategic & International Studies. “25 Years of Negotiations and Provocations: North Korea and the United States.” Accessed July 20, 2019. https://beyondparallel.csis.org.
Cha, Victor. “Politics and Democracy under the Kim Young Sam Government: Something Old, Something New,” Asian Survey 33 no. 9 (September 1993): 849– 863.
———. The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013.
Choe, Sang-Hun. “6 Ex-Officials in South Korea are Sentenced for Blacklisting Artists.” New York Times. July 27, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/world/asia/ south-korea-park-aides-artists-blacklist.html.
———. “An Overloaded Ferry Flipped and Drowned Hundreds of Schoolchildren. Could It Happen Again?” New York Times. June 10, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/sewol-ferry-accident.html.
———. “Convictions Deal Blow to South Korean Intelligence Service.” New York Times. October 28, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/world/asia/ convictions-deal-blow-to-south-korean-intelligence-service.html.
———. “Kim Jong-pil, Political Kingmaker in South Korea, Dies at 92.” New York Times, June 23, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/obituaries/kim-jong- pil-south-korea.html.
———. “Sometimes, It’s a Crime to Praise Pyongyang.” New York Times. January 5, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/world/asia/06iht- korea06.html?pagewanted=all.
108 ———. “South Korea’s Blacklist of Artists Adds to Outrage Over Presidential Scandal.” New York Times. January 12, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/world/ asia/south-korea-president-park-blacklist-artists.html.
Choe, Young-Yoon. “Sentence of Innocence to the People’s Revolution Party Case After 32 Years.” Hankook Ilbo. January 24, 2007.
Choi, Ha-young. “The North Korean Wind and South Korean Elections,” NK News, April 14, 2016, https://www.nknews.org/2016/04/the-north-korean-wind-and- south-korean-elections/.
Chosun Ilbo. “Executions still smart 30 years after.” April 8, 2005. http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2005/04/08/2005040861025.html.
Jerome Alan Cohen and Edward J. Baker, ‘U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights in South Korea’, in William Shaw (ed.), Human Rights in Korea. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Cumings, Bruce. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
Denney, Steven and Christopher Green. “Righter Than You Think: National Security Conservatism and Moon Jae-in,” SinoNK, April 03, 2018, https://sinonk.com/ 2018/04/03/righter-than-you-think-national-security-conservatism-and-moon-jae- in/.
Doucette, Jamie. “The Korean Thermidor: On Political Space and Conservative Reactions.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38 no. 2 (2013), 299–310.
Doucette, Jamie and Koo, Se-Woong. “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 46 no. 2 (2016), 198–221.
Easy, Walter and McCormack, Gavan. “South Korean Society: The Deepening Nightmare,” in Korea North and South: The Deepening Crisis. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978.
Eckert, Carter J. “Authoritarianism and Protest, 1948–1900,” in Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson, and Edward W. Wagner, Korea Old and New: A History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Economist. “South Korea’s ministry of culture is accused of blacklisting 9,500 artists.” January 28, 2017. https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/01/28/south-koreas- ministry-of-culture-is-accused-of-blacklisting-9500-artists.
109 ———. “Times change, so why not laws?” November 4, 2004. https://www.economist.com/asia/2004/11/04/times-change-so-why-not-laws.
“Exec. Order No. 12333, 3 C.F.R. (1981), https://dodsioo.defense.gov/Library/EO- 12333/.
Freedom House. “Freedom in the World 1998: South Korea Profile.” Accessed July 15, 2019. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/1998/south-korea.
———. “Freedom in the World 2005: South Korea Profile.” Accessed September 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2005/south-korea.
———. “Freedom in the World 2006: South Korea Profile.” Accessed September 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2006/south-korea.
———. “Freedom in the World 2007: South Korea Profile.” Accessed September 01, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2007/south-korea.
———. “Freedom in the World 2013: South Korea Profile.” Accessed August 23, 2018. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/south-korea.
———. “Freedom in the World 2018: South Korea Profile.” Accessed February 23, 2019. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/south-korea.
———. “Freedom in the World 2018 Methodology.” Accessed March 11, 2019. https://freedomhouse.org/report/methodology-freedom-world-2018.
———. “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2008.” Accessed September 01, 2019. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2008/south-korea.
———. “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2013.” Accessed August 01, 2019. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/south-korea.
———. “South Korea: Freedom of the Press 2017.” Accessed March 11, 2019. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/south-korea.
———. “Freedom on the Net 2011: South Korea Country Profile.” Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2011/south-korea.
———. “Freedom on the Net 2012: South Korea Country Profile.” Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2012/south-korea.
———. “Freedom on the Net 2013: South Korea Country Profile.” Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2013/south-korea.
———. “Freedom on the Net 2015: South Korea Country Profile.” Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2015/south-korea.
110 ———. “Freedom on the Net 2016: South Korea Country Profile.” Accessed August 23, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/south-korea.
———. “Freedom on the Net 2017: South Korea Country Profile.” Accessed August 23, 2018. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2017/south-korea.
———. “Freedom on the Net 2018: South Korea Country Profile.” Accessed March 11, 2019. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2018/south-korea.
Geir Helgesen, Henriette Sinding Aesen, and Uichol Kim, “Analysis of Democracy and Human Rights in Cultural Context: Psychological and Comparative Perspectives” in Democracy, Human Rights, and Peace in Korea: Psychological, Political, and Cultural Perspectives. Seoul: Kyoyook-Kwahak-Sa, 2001.
Global Security. “‘Spy Nation’ film alleges abuse of North Korean asylum seekers.” September 15, 2016. https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/rok/2016/ rok-160915-voa01.htm.
Global Voices. “South Korean Authorities Discredit Dissenting Voices as ‘Not-Real’ News.” January 2, 2017. https://globalvoices.org/2014/01/02/south-korean- authorities-discredit-dissenting-voices-as-not-real-news/.
Glosserman, Brad and Scott Snyder. “South Korea’s Growing Confidence” in The Japan- South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
Goedde, Patricia and Kim, Weonwu. “Balancing the Act on Anti-Terrorism in South Korea.” Pacific Basin Law Journal 35 no. 67 (2017), 67–96.
Gong, Qian and Gary Rawnsley. “Media freedom and responsibility in South Korea: The perceptions of journalists and politicians during the Roh Moo-hyun presidency.” Journalism 19 no. 9–10 (2018), 1257–1274.
Greitens, Sheena Chestnut. Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence. Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics, 2016.
Guardian. “South Korea spy agency admits trying to rig 2012 presidential election.” August 4, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/04/south-koreas- spy-agency-admits-trying-rig-election-national-intelligence-service-2012.
Haggard, Stephan and Jong-Sung You. “Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 45, no. 1 (2015): 167–179, https://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/abs/10.1080/00472336.2014.947310.
Hahm, Chaibong. “South Korea’s Miraculous Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 19, no. 3 (July 2008), 128–142.
111 Hancocks, Paula. “South Korean ‘Joke’ May Lead to Prison.” CNN. July 4, 2012. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/03/world/ asia/south-korea-north-joke/index.html.
Hankyoreh. “Blue House instituting measures to restore role and function of Human Rights Commission.” May 26, 2017. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/PRINT/ 796393.html.
———. “S. Korea’s commissioner resigns over country’s human rights crisis.” July 9, 2009. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/364839.html.
Hanley, Paul. “Transitional Justice in South Korea: One Country’s Restless Search for Truth and Reconciliation,” University of Pennsylvania East Asia Law Review 9, no. 2 (2014).
Harlan, Chico. “In S. Korea, a shrinking space for speech.” Washington Post. December 22, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-s-korea-a- shrinking-space-for-speech/2011/12/21/gIQAmAHgBP_story.html.
Hong, Yung Lee. “South Korea in 1991: Unprecedented Opportunity, Increasing Challenge” in “A Survey of Asia in 1991: Part I,” Asian Survey 32 no. 1 (January 1992), 64–73.
Hoon, Shim Jae. “South Korea: Spooks on a leash.” Far Eastern Economic Review 157 no. 1 (December 1993/January 1994), 22.
Human Rights Watch. “South Korea: Cold War Relic Law Criminalizes Criticism.” May 28, 2015. https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/28/south-korea-cold-war-relic-law- criminalizes-criticism.
“Hungarian Embassy in the DPRK, Telegram, 25 February 1974. Subject: Naval incident between the DPRK and South Korea.” February 25, 1974, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MOL, XIX-J-1-j Korea, 1974, 66. doboz, 81– 432, 001961/1974. Translated for NKIDP by Balazs Szalontai. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115807.
Hwang, Jong Sung and Sang-hyun Park. “Republic of Korea,” in Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2009–2010. London: Sage Publications, 2009.
Kang, Ji-nam. “Who’s Who Behind Lee Myung-bak: Choi See-joong the Chairman of the KCC (Appointed),” [in Korean]. Shindonga (583, 2008), 48–49, http://shindonga.donga.com/docs/magazine/shin/2008/04/12/200804120500019/ 200804120500019_1.html.
Kang, Tae-jun. “Is South Korea Ready to Say Goodbye to Its National Security Law?” Diplomat. December 21, 2018. https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/is-south-korea- ready-to-say-goodbye-to-its-national-security-law/.
112 Khan, Irene. “Statement by Irene Khan, Amnesty International Secretary General, on the Completion of Her Visit to South Korea.” Amnesty International. November 24, 2009. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA25/013/2009/en/81c8df37- c1d9-4d49-aa8c-825cd7ce9203/asa250132009en.pdf.
Kiai, Maina. “Statement by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association at the conclusion of his visit to the Republic of Korea.” 2016. http://bit.ly/1RfNJiy.
Kihl, Young Whan. Transforming Korean Politics: Democracy, Reform, and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Kim, Bo-hyeop. “More NIS abuses surface during leadership tenure of Won Sei-hoon.” Hankyoreh, September 12, 2017. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/ e_national/810663.html.
Kim, Byung-Kook., Pyŏng-guk Kim, and Ezra F. Vogel. The Park Chung Hee era: The transformation of South Korea. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Kim, Dang. Secret File National Intelligence Agency.
Kim, Da-sol. “What NIS is accused of doing.” Korea Herald. November 14, 2017. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20171114000943.
Kim, Hong-nack. “The 1988 Parliamentary Election in South Korea” in Korea under Roh Tae-woo: Democratisation, Northern Policy and Inter-Korean Relations, ed. James Cotton. Canberra: ANU Printery, 1993.
Kim, Hun Shik. “Media, the Public, and Freedom of the Press.” Social Indicators Research 62/63, “The Quality of Life in Korea: Comparative and Dynamic Perspectives” (April 2003), 345–364.
Kim, Insoo. “South Korea’s Immature Professionalism in the Security Sector,” Middle East Institute, March 13, 2014, http://www.mei.edu/publications/south-koreas- immature-professionalism-security-sector#_ftnref5.
Kim, Jack and James Pearson. “South Korea court orders breakup of left-wing party.” Reuters. December 18, 2014. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea- politics/south-korea-court-orders-breakup-of-left-wing-party- idUSKBN0JX07R20141219.
Kim, Jae-Youl. “Democratisation in South Korea,” in Korea under Roh Tae-Woo: Democratisation, Northern Policy and Inter-Korean Relations. Printery: Australian National University, 1993.
Kim, Joungwon. Divided Korea: The Politics of Development, 1945–1972, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975). 113 Kim, Nam-il. “Government blacklist stretched beyond culture, across South Korean society.” Hankyoreh. February 1, 2017, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/ english_edition/e_national/780870.html.
Kim, Naru. “How did the bereaved families of the Sewol victims become ‘pro-North’ after losing their children?” (in Korean). KBS News. May 06, 2019. https://mn.kbs.co.kr/news/view.do?ncd=4194889.
Kim, Se-Jin, The Politics of Military Revolution in Korea, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 35
Kim, Sung-han and Lee, Geun. “When security met politics: desecuritization of North Korean threats by South Korea’s Kim Dae-jung government.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 11 (2011), 25 - 55.
Kim, Tae-gyu. “NIS to abolish office for domestic intelligence collection as part of its reform,” July 27, 2017, Hankyoreh, http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/ e_national/804586.html.
Kim, Yong Cheol, R. William Liddle, and Sam Said. “Political leadership and Civilian Supremacy in Third Wave Democracies: Comparing South Korea and Indonesia.” Pacific Affairs 79 no. 2 (Summer 2006). 247–268.
The Korea Association of National Intelligence Studies, National Intelligence Studies.
Korea Communications Commission. “Overview.” Accessed August 01, 2019. https://eng.kcc.go.kr/user.do?page=E01010100&dc=E01010100.
Korea Times. “80% of Koreans want Defense Security Command dismantled.” July 12, 2018. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2018/07/356_252145.html.
Kraft, Diane. “South Korea’s National Security Law: A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World,” Wisconsin International Law Journal 24, no. 2 (2006): 631, https://uknowledge.uky.edu/law_facpub.
La Rue, Frank. “Full Text of Press Statement Delivered by UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, After the Conclusion of His Visit to the Republic of Korea.” United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. May 17, 2010. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/opinion/docs/ROK- Pressstatement17052010.pdf.
———. “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.” (A/HRC/17/27/Add.2), 2011. http://bit.ly/ 1QgytnP.
114 Larkin, John. “Spies Out in the Cold,” Far Eastern Economic Review 165 no. 7. February 2002.
Lankov, Andrei. The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Lee, Chidong. “S. Korea reforming NK defector interrogation system.” Yonhap News Agency. July 28, 2014, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20140728007800315.
Lee, Jeong-hwan. “A private organisation under the president? The KCSC’s structural irony,” [in Korean] Media Today, September 14, 2011, http://www.mediatoday.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=97350.
Lee, Se-young and Jung-ae Lee. “Blue House instituting measures to restore role and function of Human Rights Commission.” Hankyoreh. May 26, 2017. http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/796393.html.
Lee, Sung-eun. “Squabbling at Assembly could mean no hearing for Cho.” Korea JoongAng Daily. August 31, 2019. http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/ article/Article.aspx?aid=3067432.
Lee, Yoo Eun. “South Korean authorities discredit dissenting voices as ‘not-real’ news.” Global Voices. January 2, 2014. http://bit.ly/1cpE2sy.
Maass, Peter. “Roh Fires 2 “Officials in S. Korea.” Washington Post. October 9, 1990. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/10/09/roh-fires-2- officials-in-s-korea/25581c2e-092e-408b-8009-811b1cca7ff8/?noredirect=on.
MacDonald, Donald Stone. The Koreans: Contemporary Politics and Society Third Edition. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996.
Matei, Florina C. and Thomas Bruneau. “Intelligence reform in new democracies: factors supporting or arresting progress,” Democratization 18, no. 3 (June 2011): 602– 630.
———. “Policymakers and Intelligence Reform in the New Democracies,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 24 no. 4 (2011), 656–691.
Moran, Jon. “South Korea” in PSI Handbook of Global Security and Intelligence: National Approaches, Volume 1, The Americas and Asia, ed. Stuart Farson, Peter Gill, Mark Phythian, and Shlomo Shpiro. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008.
Nanto, Dick K. “North Korea: Chronology of Provocations, 1950–2003.” Congressional Research Service. Updated March 18, 2003.
115 National Security Act, Law No. 3318 (1980), as revised by Law No. 4373 (1991), art. 1 (S. Korea).
New York Times. “In Seoul, marking the somber anniversary of executions.” April 11, 2005. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/world/asia/in-seoul-marking-a- somber-anniversary-of-executions.html.
Noh, Hyun-woog and Hwan-bong Jung. “Cyber Command repeatedly interfered on behalf of ruling party.” Hankyoreh. November 20, 2014. http://english.hani.co.kr/ arti/english_edition/e_national/665362.html.
Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, New ed. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Ock, Hyun-ju. “Tension mounts over police-prosecution investigative rights reform.” Korea Herald. May 6, 2019. http://www.koreaherald.com/ view.php?ud=20190506000151.
OECD. “OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) welcomes Korean membership.” Accessed September 5, 2018. http://www.oecd.org/korea/ oecddevelopmentassistancecommitteedacwelcomeskoreanmembership.htm.
OpenNet Initiative. “Country Profile: South Korea.” December 26, 2010. http://opennet.net/research/profiles/south-korea.
Park, C. G. “Dead-end Democracy: Who Can Lead It in Korea?” Korea Times, August 25, 1991.
Park, Gwang-su. “The bereaved families of the Sewol ferry disaster are pro-North? Park, DSC’s branding from right after the disaster” [in Korean]. JoongAng Ilbo. May 07, 2019. https://news.joins.com/article/23460517.
Park, Ju-min. “South Korea court orders retrial of ex-spy chief in vote-meddling case.” Reuters. July 16, 2015. https://in.reuters.com/article/southkorea-spychief-retrial/ south-korea-court-orders-retrial-of-ex-spy-chief-in-vote-meddling-case- idINKCN0PQ0LJ20150716.
Park, Jun-yong and Hyo-sil Kim. “Dismissed producer returns as new president of MBC after nearly 2,000 day absence.” Hankyoreh. December 08, 2017. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/822687.html.
Park, S. Nathan. “The Fall of ‘Corrupt but Competent’ Leadership in South Korea.” Atlantic. March 14, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/ 03/south-korea-park-impeach-sewol/519483/.
116 Park, Tae-woo. “Former Cyber Command spy-ops head sentenced to prison for 2012 election interference.” Hankyoreh. May 16, 2015. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/ english_edition/e_national/691507.html.
People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy. “Illegal Intervention by State Agencies in the Presidential Election.” December 11, 2013. http://www.peoplepower21.org/ English/1128957.
Reporters Without Borders, Internet Enemies Report 2012 (Paris: Reporters Without Borders, March 12, 2012), http://en.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/rapport- internet2012_ang.pdf.
———. “Reporters Without Borders Annual Report 2004–South Korea.” Accessed September 10, 2019. https://www.refworld.org/docid/46e69100c.html.
The Republic of Korea Cheong Wa Dae. “Message from President Moon Jae-in on Law Enforcement Reform.” February 15, 2019. http://english1.president.go.kr/ BriefingSpeeches/Speeches/121.
———. “Message from President Moon Jae-In to the Staff of the National Intelligence Service.” July 20, 2018. http://english1.president.go.kr/BriefingSpeeches/ Speeches/55.
Scobell, Andrew and John Sanford. “North Korea’s Military Threat: Pyongyang’s Conventional Forces, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Ballistic Missiles,” Strategic Studies Institute, ISBN 1–58487-286-1.
Sekaggya, Margaret. “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.” (A/HRC/25/55/Add.1), 2013. http://bit.ly/1oJBN1t.
Seo, Hyesoo. “Intelligence Politicization in the Republic of Korea: Implications for Reform.” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 31, no. 3 (September 2018), 454–455.
Seo, Young-ji. “NIS found to have conducted surveillance of MBC, KBS,” Hankyoreh, September 18, 2017, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/ 811480.html.
———. “NIS secretly provided funds to conservative public outreach organization.” Hankyoreh. August 22, 2017. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/ e_national/807856.html.
Ser, Myo-ja. “Moon reshuffles cabinet to push forward policies.” Korea JoongAng Daily. August 10, 2019. http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/ article.aspx?aid=3066574.
117 Seth, Michael. “Division and War, 1945 to 1953.” A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present, Second ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 2016.
Slater, Dan, and Joseph Wong. “The Strength to Concede: Ruling Parties and Democratization in Developmental Asia.” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 3 (September 1, 2013): 717–33. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592713002090.
Snyder, Scott. South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers, New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
Sung, Minkyu. “Surveillance and Anti-Communist Authoritarianism in South Korea,” Surveillance & Society 15 no. 3/4 (2017), 486–490.
Van Wagenen, James, “A Review of Congressional Oversight,” Central Intelligence Agency. Center for the Study of Intelligence. https://www.cia.gov/library/center- for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/97unclass/ wagenen.html.
World Economic Forum. “Hwang Kyo-ahn.” Accessed August 29, 2019. https://www.weforum.org/people/hwang-kyo-ahn.
Yonhap News Agency. “Ex-presidential official fined for leaking info on ex-top prosecutor’s extramarital son.” January 7, 2016. http://bit.ly/1oZHkSb.
———. “Moon says military will never again be used for political gains.” August 14, 2018. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20180814004151315.
———. “‘NIS running the Consultative Council for State Development and Future Education’ Park Seung-chun, former head of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, and Won Sei-hun Indicted” [in Korean]. January 31, 2018. https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20180131187800004.
———. “Park names Justice Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn as new PM.” May 21, 2015. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20150521002600315.
———. “Prosecution indicts former MBC chief, ex-NIS director.” January 17, 2018. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20180117012300315.
———. “Security command general arrested for alleged surveillance of civilians.” September 5, 2018. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180905000877.
Yoon, Sojung. “Cheong Wa Dae announces reforms at investigation agencies.” Korea.net. January 15, 2018. http://korea.net/NewsFocus/policies/ view?articleId=152994.
118 York, Jillian and Rainey Reitman. “In South Korea, the Only Thing Worse Than Online Censorship is Secret Online Censorship.” Electronic Frontier Foundation. September 6, 2011. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/south-korea-only- thing-worse-online-censorship.
You, Jong-sung. “The Cheonan Incident and the Declining Freedom of Expression in South Korea,” Asia Perspective 39 (2015).
119 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
120 INITIAL DISTRIBUTION LIST
1. Defense Technical Information Center Ft. Belvoir, Virginia
2. Dudley Knox Library Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, California
121