hankyoreh

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent and Park Byong-su, staff reporter

South Korea‘s foreign and military policies intelligence organizations, and strategic technology were classified as key targets for US National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence gathering in 2007, a document released on Nov. 4 reveals.

South Korea was one of 33 allies and enemies listed as the subjects of intelligence gathering.

The information comes from the New York Times online edition, which disclosed a portion of secret documents it received from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The documents show the NSA carrying out wide-scale surveillance not only on enemy countries and terrorist groups but also key allies with shared diplomatic and economic interests. The inclusion of a specific list of surveillance targets is already drawing major attention.

Titled “SIGINT System Strategic Mission List: January 2007,” the list specifies missions over a twelve- to eighteen-month period from the drafting date. This coincides with the end of the Roh Moo-hyun administration (2003-Feb. 2008) and the beginning of the Lee Myung-bak administration (2008-Feb. 2013) in South Korea.

“SIGINT” is an abbreviation of “signals intelligence,” referring to intelligence collection using state-of-the-art electronic equipment.

The document lists sixteen missions, including antiterrorism and foreign policy, with each divided into “focus areas,” or those critical to US interests, and “accepted risks,” or those considered a stage lower but still of strategic importance.

With the focus areas in particular, the fact that missions are listed as to be carried out at all costs means that agents most likely used every means available to collect intelligence, including eavesdropping and hacking.

The New York Times article noted that the NSA made use of major overseas bases in Great Britain, Australia, Japan, and South Korea.

South Korea was listed as a focus area in 16 missions: foreign policy, foreign intelligence activity, risks to US troops, and strategic technology. The NSA orders intelligence collection on the goals, position, programs, and measures of the target country’s foreign policy. Seventeen other countries were listed with the United Nations as focus areas: China, Russia, France, Germany, Japan, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Syria, Turkey, Mexico, India, and Pakistan.

South Korea and the US were involved in a number of sensitive diplomatic issues at the time the document was drafted, including negotiations for a free trade agreement, the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, the transfer of wartime operational control, and extending the deployment of South Korean troops in Iraq. Rumors were also circulating that then-President Roh Moo-hyun was planning an inter-Korean summit.

In the category of foreign intelligence activities, South Korea was listed as a focus area alongside nine other countries: China, Russia, Cuba, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, France, and Venezuela. Together with Israel and France, it was one of just three allies on the list.

The focus areas for this mission were given as “[e]spionage/intelligence collection operations and manipulation/influence operations conducted by foreign intelligence services directed against U.S. government, military, science & technology and Intelligence Community.”

Analysts said the US appeared to have reacted sensitively to South Korean intelligence authorities gathering information on its military and technology.

Under the category of “US forces at risk,” South Korea was listed as a focus area for its military planning and operations support for OPLAN 527, an operations plan for all-out war on the Korean peninsula. South Korean “leadership intentions” for the plan were also listed as an “accepted risk.”

Under the Roh administration, Seoul and Washington were in conflict over the latter’s demand to replace OPLAN 5027 with OPLAN 5029, a more specific version that outlined the US’s role in handling nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in the event of upheaval in North Korea. After Lee took office in 2008, the US and South Korea had secret discussions on OPLAN 5029, which the preceding Roh administration had objected to.

For the “emerging strategic technologies” mission, South Korea appeared as a focus area together with Russia, China, India, Japan, Germany, France, Israel, Singapore, and Sweden. The document defined strategic technologies as “critical technologies that could provide a strategic military, economic, or political advantage,” with categories including computing and information technology, stealth, electronic warfare technologies, and nanotechnologies.

From the document, it seems reasonable to conclude that the South Korean President was one of the 35 world leaders previous revelations showed to have been subjected to NSA surveillance.

The document listed a total of 33 countries among its focus areas. Germany, Mexico, and Brazil - countries where eavesdropping of heads of state has already been revealed - were all included among them.

On Oct. 24, Britain’s Guardian newspaper published a report citing Snowden’s document that claimed that the NSA has eavesdropped on the communications of 35 heads of state.

South Korea is very likely to still be one of the NSA’s key targets for intelligence gathering. In addition to the ongoing issue of North Korea’s nuclear program, a host of other diplomatic and security issues are being addressed between Seoul and Washington, including the two countries’ Atomic Energy Agreement, their shares in defense costs, and frictions between Seoul and Tokyo. Other major interests include the US troops stationed on the peninsula and the high technology capabilities of South Korean companies.

In response to the New York Times disclosure, a senior official in South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said the South Korean government “expressed deep concern just after the report and asked the US to promptly provide a reasonable explanation and appropriate measures.”

The same official said Seoul “plans to state a more clear and stern position at an appropriate time if [the details of the report] prove to be true as the situation unfolds.”

The New York Times also reported that the NSA information was distributed to various “customers” in the US administration. These customers included not only security agencies like the White House, Defense Department, State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, CIA, and Homeland Security Department, but also general agencies like the Energy Department, Commerce Department, and Office of the US Trade Representative.

The NYT also quoted sources as saying the NSA accounted for more than half of the information in the “President’s Daily Brief” received by President Barack Obama each morning, which was seen as “a measure of success for American spies.”

“That creates intense pressure not to miss anything,” the NYT reported.

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