hankyoreh

By Jung Hwan-bong, staff reporter

“When the last typhoon passed by, the Blue House sent out a headline to the newspapers. Whether the typhoon actually caused a lot of damage or not didn’t matter. The papers were just supposed to fit it in somehow. The headline was ‘Thanks to the Four Major Rivers Project, 100-Year Typhoon Causes Less Damage.’”

This was the first post that a National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent surnamed Kim, 29, voted down on Aug. 27, 2012, after registering an account on Today’s Humor, a website that is popular with young people.

Ten minutes after registering on the site, Kim gave thumbs down to a post criticizing then president Lee Myung-bak’s Four Major Rivers Project. The next day, Aug. 28, Kim set up four more accounts on the website. At Today Humor, it is possible to set up an account simply by providing an email address. The user’s real name, resident ID number, and phone number are not required.

Using these accounts, Kim clicked “recommend” on a post that said, “Out with the Leftist Zombies!”, which is a term used to criticize progressives in Korea. Next, Kim posted a comment that said, “Even if we pour money into North Korea, all we get back is bombs.”

This was the day when Kim’s psychological warfare began in earnest on Humor Today, as she posted comments related to last December’s presidential election and other political issues.

Kim was an ordinary university student who enrolled in the computer science department at a private university in Seoul in 2003. She also studied social sciences in a study group and took part in a computer club on campus. On her personal website, she even showed a certain amount of social consciousness, posting socially critical quotations from Kim Je-dong, a TV personality and Roh Moo-hyun supporter known for his gift of the gab.

After graduating from university in 2007, getting a job was a big concern, so Kim was overjoyed when she was accepted to the NIS the following year. She was the kind of typical 20-year-old that we see every day. But then something happened that led Kim to live a different life from other twentysomethings.

That was her assignment to the NIS’s psychological warfare division. After joining the NIS in 2008, Kim spent seven months doing physical, airborne, and ocean training. She even hiked Jiri Mountain over the course three full days.

In Oct. 2010, she was assigned to the psychological warfare division, which was divided into four teams. Her cyber activity began in Aug. 2012, just before the presidential election. The unit’s first team was in charge of planning, and team two dealt with the big portal sites. Team five was responsible for social media websites.

Team three was where Kim ended up working. This team was tasked with mid-size internet communities such as Today’s Humor, Ilgan Best Jeojangso (Daily Best Storehouse, better known as “Ilbe”), and Bobae Dream (Treasure Dream), a site for selling used cars.

The stage of activity for the NIS psychological warfare division was major websites where ordinary people gather, and division agents worked to dominate the prevailing mood at these sites.

Kim’s primary job was writing posts on Today’s Humor, but she had to keep a low profile. According to the operation manual for the psychological warfare division, agents were not supposed to work near the NIS office, which was located in the Naegok neighborhood of Seoul’s Seocho district.

The same manual stated that agents had to do their work away from the entrance to a cafe so as to avoid being spotted by security cameras. Kim also had to avoid using a credit card that was in her own name, as this could be traced, and it was forbidden for her to go to the same coffee shop more than a few times. In addition, every week or two she had to delete the posts she had written.

Kim went around coffee shops in Seoul’s Gangnam district, where she lived, along with cafes in Myeongdong, the Sinsa neighborhood, and other parts of the city. At the cafes, she would access the internet and add posts to Today’s Humor.

It seems that in order for NIS agents to engage in political activity online during their work hours, the most important thing is for them to conceal their identity.

The objective of the online commenting was quite clear. Kim voted down posts that criticized the government or that supported opposition candidate Moon Jae-in and independent Ahn Cheol-soo, and she voted up posts written in support of the Lee administration (or written by other agents).

Sometimes Kim also received urgent orders from the team leader. Kim was following such an order when she posted the “MB Style” video to Today’s Humor on Aug. 28, 2012. “MB Style” is a parody of Psy’s “Gangnam Style.” The video was made in praise of former president Lee Myung-bak, who is often referred to as “MB.”

Kim’s daily schedule was fairly simple. She found a suitable coffee shop, kept an eye on Today’s Humor, and wrote posts. Around lunchtime, she went to her office at NIS headquarters in the Naegok neighborhood and reported her online activity.

After delivering her report and receiving instructions for the day’s psychological warfare, Kim left the headquarters. She then went around to various cafes, sitting at her laptop and waging psychological warfare with netizens until 6 pm, when she called it a day.

Some of the mid-size internet communities that Kim was in charge of required real-name confirmation. If she waged psychological warfare using a single ID, there was a good chance that sharp-eyed netizens would notice that something was fishy.

In fact, at the beginning of September - not long after Kim began doing this kind of work - posts started going up on Today’s Humor suggesting that she was being paid to post. Kim sought out those posts and tried voting them down, but it was not enough.

When Kim told her team leader about these problems, she was immediately provided with the resident identification number of a civilian surnamed Lee, 42. Kim deployed even more accounts and became more dedicated to her psychological warfare.

The instructions that Kim received from the psychological warfare division included criticizing Kwak No-hyun, former superintendent of Seoul schools; praising Lee Myung-bak’s overseas trip; slamming democratic presidential candidate Moon Jae-in’s support for the unconditional resumption of tourism to Mount Keumgang; and praying for the success of the Naro-ho satellite.

Most of the instructions were unconnected with North Korea, though Mount Keumgang is in North Korea. Nevertheless, Kim seems to have believed that decision-making was best left to people at the top. She simply did as she was instructed.

She even had to post criticism of Kim Je-dong, the comedian that she had liked at one time. Kim wrote the following post on the message board of Bobae Dream on Oct. 3, 2013: “I really like Kim Je-dong on a personal level, but I don’t get his position on the naval base. . . I’m just concerned that all these people coming together to oppose the naval base are only making things harder for the residents of Gangjeong Village [in Jeju Island].”

Kim’s psychological warfare came to an end on Dec. 11, 2012. She spent the day just as she had any other. At about 3:50 pm, she logged onto Today’s Humor and voted down a post that was titled “I’m kind of worried about the overseas vote.”

The post expressed concern that votes cast by Koreans overseas would work to the advantage of Park Geun-hye, who was the presidential candidate for the conservative Saenuri Party (NFP) at the time. As Kim rotated through various accounts, she voted down this and twelve similar posts.

After deleting seven posts that she had written herself, she wrote a post titled “You aren’t jealous of North Korea’s technology, are you?,” which criticized North Korea’s rocket launch, and then wrapped up her work at Today’s Humor.

Two hours later, police officers and staffs with the National Election Commission showed up at Kim’s apartment in Gangnam after receiving a tip from the Democratic Party. When they asked Kim whether she was working for the NIS, she denied it. After entering her apartment, Kim shut the door and did not emerge for three days. She even tried erasing her online activity, including permanently deleting 187 files from her laptop around on Dec. 12.

Five days after Kim’s identity was disclosed, the police made an interim announcement on the results of the investigation, saying they had been unable to discover any wrongdoing.

The police’s announcement, which was made at 11 pm immediately after the close of the presidential debate, gave rise to suspicions that the police were trying to cover up the incident.

After Park was elected president on Dec. 19, it appeared that the NIS‘s psychological warfare campaign against the Korean public had been brought to a successful conclusion. At 2 pm the next day, psychological warfare division head Min Byeong-ju sent a text message to Kim.

“The election is over now, and all we have to do now is cover our tracks,” Min said. “You have no idea how grateful I was to be able to relax as I watched the election coverage, and it’s all thanks to you.”

But no matter how much they deleted, traces of the posts remained online, and the truth came out. Kim was transferred from the psychological warfare division to another division inside the NIS, where she is working today.

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