hankyoreh

Liberty Korea Party lawmaker Khang Hyo-shang undergoes a special Blue House investigation regarding a leak of diplomatic secrets to the press.

Reports say that a diplomat at the South Korean embassy to the US leaked the content of a phone call between the leaders of South Korea and the US to Khang Hyo-shang, a lawmaker with the Liberty Korea Party (LKP). Since the content of phone calls between state leaders could contain foreign policy and security secrets, they’re managed as level-three state secrets. It’s astonishing to think that a current diplomat would have deliberately leaked such state secrets to a lawmaker from the opposition party. This can only be regarded as an extreme lapse of discipline.

What’s even more serious is how Kang has behaved. After taking advantage of his personal connection with the diplomat, a high school alumnus, to acquire the classified material, Kang leaked that information to the press to fuel a political attack. That’s irresponsible behavior that exhibits no concern for the national interest. A thorough investigation must be conducted to hold the guilty parties responsible and prevent such behavior from reoccurring.

LKP floor leader Na Kyung-won described this as “public interest whistleblowing that brings to our attention the reality of our groveling foreign policy,” while Kang claimed that he “published the information because of the public’s right to know.” But “public interest whistleblowing” means making the public aware of corruption or other inappropriate behavior taking place inside an organization. It’s absurd to use that term to describe the leak of diplomatic secrets on which two countries’ trust depends. Why else would the US, and many other countries, classify diplomatic documents as state secrets and not make them public until decades have passed?

What’s more, the gist of the phone call in question was South Korean President Moon Jae-in asking US President Donald Trump to visit South Korea at the end of May and Trump replying that he would consider it. The schedule of a still unconfirmed summit cannot be the subject of public interest whistleblowing. Stealing information classified as a level-three state secret and then exploiting it for political ends goes beyond the public’s right to know.

The LKP also alleged that the Blue House had violated the basic rights of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) employees by seizing and searching their mobile phones without a warrant in an attempt to find the leaker. That’s no more than a political assault that gets its priorities mixed up. Is the LKP really saying that the government ought to have just sat on its hands while diplomatic secrets were being leaked to the public?

The repeated breakdown of discipline at MOFA needs to be corrected once and for all. Not long ago, a crumpled Taegeukgi (the Korean flag) was raised during the first round of South Korea-Spain strategic dialogue, resulting in the individual responsible being reprimanded. MOFA has also been lampooned for distributing material that incorrectly refers to the Czech Republic as Czechoslovakia and mixes up the Baltics and the Balkans. After a series of missteps, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said during a meeting of senior diplomats in March that she feels “responsible as the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs” and promised to prevent such matters from reoccurring, but her words proved hollow. Our nation’s prestige depends on our foreign policy — can MOFA be trusted to handle it?

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]